Yes, Let's: New and Selected Poems

by Thomas M. Disch

Book by Disch, Professor Tom

Genres: Poetry

128 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1989

About the author

Poet and cynic, Thomas M. Disch brought to the sf of the New Wave a camp sensibility and a sardonicism that too much sf had lacked. His sf novels include Camp Concentration, with its colony of prisoners mutated into super-intelligence by the bacteria that will in due course kill them horribly, and On Wings of Song, in which many of the brightest and best have left their bodies for what may be genuine, or entirely illusory, astral flight and his hero has to survive until his lover comes back to him; both are stunningly original books and both are among sf's more accomplishedly bitter-sweet works.

In later years, Disch had turned to ironically moralized horror novels like The Businessman, The MD, The Priest and The Sub in which the nightmare of American suburbia is satirized through the terrible things that happen when the magical gives people the chance to do what they really really want. Perhaps Thomas M. Disch's best known work, though, is The Brave Little Toaster, a reworking of the Brothers Grimm's "Town Musicians of Bremen" featuring wornout domestic appliances -- what was written as a satire on sentimentality became a successful children's animated musical.

Reviews

[Daniel Klawitter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Knew of Disch as a Science Fiction writer and essayist before reading his poetry, which is remarkably good. Rhymed verse for the most part of a very high caliber. About 7 really accomplished poems here that are worth re-visiting and rereading. But the whole collection is engaging and I breezed through it in a day and a half. If you like Gail White or any of the so-called "new formalists" in poetry, you'll dig Disch if you haven't discovered him already.

[Aaron · Rating 4 out of 5]

Playful, cynical, altogether rather lovely collection of Disch’s poetry. Fans of his SF work might recognize the voice, but he explores an even wider range of material in poetic form, including more personal writing. There’s a fair bit of rhyming poetry and playful formalist gestures like villanelles and abecedarians, which require the right frame of mind but work surprisingly well. A fine addition to an already rich oeuvre.