About the Size of It

Tom Disch's first collection of poems for ten years presents a dazzling variety show of inventive wit. His serious gift for humour permeates poems by turn lyric and narrative, satirical, rebellious, ribald, uncompromising and honest. Too idiosyncratic and various a poet to belong to any poetic grouping, he is simply, in the late Donald Davie's phrase, consistently entertaining and intelligent'. Tom Disch was born in Des Moines, Iowa in 1940. He moved to New York, where he still lives, in 1957. A critically acclaimed and award-winning science fiction author (writing as Thomas M. Disch), he has published many novels, collections of short stories and of poetry, as well as children's fiction and two works of poetry criticism. He has contributed poems regularly to Hudson Review, Light, Paris Review, Poetry (Chicago) and the Times Literary Supplement; he writes reviews for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Nation and others.

Born in Des Moines, Iowa in 1940, Tom Disch grew up in the Midwest before moving to New York in the 1960s. An acclaimed writer of science fiction he has also published several novellas (one of which was made into a film by Walt Disney), ten collections of poetry and two books of poetry criticism. He is a renowned reviewer.

The dot on the i	p. 11
A	p. 13
The thought that counts	p. 15
The size of the world	p. 18
The vindication of obesity	p. 21
Red tulips in 1947	p. 27
A centenary observation	p. 31
Duelling platitudes	p. 32
The flesh's wedding	p. 34
The ferris wheel	p. 35
Not quite a sonnet but I love you just the same	p. 37
A Cape Mendocino rose	p. 38
Riddle	p. 39
Three people and their feelings	p. 40
A treatise on the common cold	p. 42
In memoriam	p. 44
Yorick's reply	p. 45
Juliet, voice over	p. 46
Gilda : an entr'acte	p. 47
Buying a used car	p. 48
Medusa at her vanity	p. 49
A gravedigger's soliloquy	p. 50
The varieties of oneiric experience	p. 52
The rapture	p. 54
Ode to equanimity	p. 55
The last time I saw Paris	p. 57
Villanelle for Charles Olson	p. 61
The book in your hand	p. 62
'Ritin'	p. 63
Womankind and poesy	p. 65
Colloquy	p. 66
Gods	p. 67
The cubist paints of lesser museums	p. 68
At the Van Gogh museum	p. 69
Fashion statements	p. 71
Quilt	p. 74
Inventory	p. 75
A galop for Cesar Franck	p. 77
Symphonic ode for St. Cecilia's Day	p. 79
The crumbling infrastructure	p. 87
Class notes	p. 89
Death wish IV	p. 91
Nether : a traveller's notes	p. 92
A stroll through Moscow	p. 93
Haikus of an AmPart	p. 95
We are divided everywhere in two parts	p. 99
Slouches	p. 102
Rules of order for new conservatives	p. 104
Summer of '88	p. 105
Centennial tankas	p. 107
Pervigilium veneris, 1991	p. 108
To the young mercenaries	p. 109
After Peguy	p. 110
A benevolent demi-villanelle	p. 111
Systems of mourning	p. 112
In a time of plagues	p. 113
A war memorial	p. 114
Waking early New Year's Day, without a hangover	p. 115
Jerusalem recaptured	p. 117
The return to nature	p. 123
Sylvan marriage	p. 131
Birdsong interpreted	p. 133
Nightmare on Elm Street	p. 134
The dirt and the willow	p. 135
Coming to	p. 137
Brief lives	p. 140
The mushrooms' salon	p. 141
The last shows of summer	p. 142
September	p. 143
October	p. 144
Indian spring	p. 145
Rocks on a winter evening	p. 147
Theseus to Hippolyta	p. 148
Songs of the rooftops	p. 149
The squirrel	p. 151
Dialogue with a spider	p. 152
The chameleon and the butterfly	p. 153
The hawk and the metaphor	p. 154
Remarks concerning the fitness of all things	p. 155
Mahler's 8th	p. 156
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Summary

Author Biography

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials