Thomas Michael Disch

Thomas Michael Disch Poems

Thomas Michael Disch Biography

Thomas Michael Disch (February 2, 1940 – July 4, 2008) was an American science fiction author and poet. He won the Hugo Award for Best Related Book – previously called "Best Non-Fiction Book" – in 1999, and he had two other Hugo nominations and nine Nebula Award nominations to his credit, plus one win of the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, a Rhysling Award, and two Seiun Awards, among others. In the 1960s, his work began appearing in science-fiction magazines. His critically acclaimed science fiction novels, The Genocides, Camp Concentration, 334 and On Wings of Song are major contributions to the New Wave science fiction movement. In 1996, his book The Castle of Indolence: On Poetry, Poets, and Poetasters was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and in 1999, Disch won the Nonfiction Hugo for The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of, a meditation on the impact of science fiction on our culture, as well as the Michael Braude Award for Light Verse. Among his other nonfiction work, he wrote theatre and opera criticism for The New York Times, The Nation, and other periodicals. He also published several volumes of poetry as Tom Disch. Following an extended period of depression following the death in 2005 of his life-partner, Charles Naylor, Disch stopped writing almost entirely, except for poetry – although he did produce two novellas. Disch committed suicide by gunshot on July 4 2008 in his apartment in Manhattan, New York City. His last book, The Word of God, which was written shortly before Naylor died, had just been published a few days before Disch's death.)

The Best Poem Of Thomas Michael Disch

Ode to a Blizzard

O! wonderful for weight and whiteness!
Ideolog whose absolutes
Are always proven right
By white and then
More white and white again,
Winning the same argument year
After year by making the opposition
Disappear!

O! dear miniature of infinity with no
End in sight and no snow-
Flake exactly like
Another, all
A little different no
Matter how many may fall,
Just like our own DNA or the human face
Eternal!

O! still keep covering the street
And sidewalks, cemeteries, even
Our twice-shoveled drive,
And all that is alive,
With geometries that sleet
Will freeze into Death's
Impromptu vision of a heaven
Wholly white!

For we know who your sponsor is, whose will
You so immensely serve,
Whose chill is more severe
Than any here.
Though his name may be unspoken,
His commandments are unbroken,
And every monument that you erect
Belongs to him!

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