Stuart Dischell

Stuart Dischell Poems

Stuart Dischell Biography

Stuart Dischell is an American poet and Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where he teaches in the Master of Fine Arts Program in Creative Writing. He is also a contributing editor at The Alaska Quarterly Review. He was born on May 29, 1954 in Atlantic City, New Jersey. He studied Literature at Antioch College and received his Master of Fine Arts degree at the Writers workshop at the University of Iowa, where he studied poetry with Donald Justice, Stanley Plumly, and Jon Anderson. After graduating Iowa, Dischell moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts and taught at Boston University. In 1992, he joined the faculty of the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Program at the University of North Carolina Greensboro. Dischell is the author of Good Hope Road, a 1991 National Poetry Series Selection, (Viking, 1993), Evenings & Avenues (Penguin, 1996), Dig Safe (Penguin, 2003), and Backwards Days (Penguin, 2007). A recipient of awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the North Carolina Arts Council, and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, Dischell's poems have been published in journals such as The Atlantic, The New Republic, Agni, Ploughshares, Slate, The Kenyon Review, and in anthologies including Essential Pleasures, Hammer and Blaze, The Pushcart Prize, and Good Poems.)

The Best Poem Of Stuart Dischell

Days of Me

When people say they miss me,
I think how much I miss me too,
Me, the old me, the great me,
Lover of three women in one day,
Modest me, the best me, friend
To waiters and bartenders, hearty
Laugher and name rememberer,
Proud me, handsome and hirsute
In soccer shoes and shorts
On the ball fields behind MIT,
Strong me in a weightbelt at the gym,
Mutual sweat dripper in and out
Of the sauna, furtive observer
Of the coeducated and scantily clad,
Speedy me, cyclist of rivers,
Goose and peregrine falcon
Counter, all season venturer,
Chatterer-up of corner cops,
Groundskeepers, mothers with strollers,
Outwitter of panhandlers and bill
Collectors, avoider of levies, excises,
Me in a taxi in the rain,
Pressing my luck all the way home.

That's me at the dice table, baby,
Betting come, little Joe, and yo,
Blowing the coals, laying thunder,
My foot on top a fifty dollar chip
Some drunk spilled on the floor,
Dishonest me, evener of scores,
Eager accepter of the extra change,
Hotel towel pilferer, coffee spoon
Lifter, fervent retailer of others'
Humor, blackhearted gossiper,
Poisoner at the well, dweller
In unsavory detail, delighted sayer
Of the vulgar, off course belier
Of the true me, empiric builder
Newly haircutted, stickerer-up
For pals, jam unpriser, medic
To the self-inflicted, attorney
To the self-indicted, petty accountant
And keeper of the double books,
Great divider of the universe
And all its forms of existence
Into its relationship to me,
Fellow trembler to the future,
Thin air gawker, apprehender
Of the frameless door.

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