Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #582958 in Books
• Published on: 1971-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 203 pages

Amazon.com
Dylan Thomas's poems gambol and frisk across the tongue and imagination like those of few poets I have ever read. His choicely crafted (and often synaesthetic) phrases, his musicality, and his laughingly lilting language are nicely captured by the first two stanzas of Fern Hill--read it aloud for full effect:

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honored among wagons I was prince of the apple towns,
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams...

This collection of his poems contains only those pieces he wished preserved and should be owned by anyone who loves beautifully crafted language.

Customer Reviews

In the beginning was the mounting fire.
Dylan Thomas - Collected Poems is a brief book. It contains poems which, according to a short introductory note by Thomas, he considered important works in his career as a poet. The poems span Thomas' career from 1934-1952 and include those for which he is best known - "Do not go gentle into that good night", "And death shall have no dominion", and "After the funeral". The poems were selected by Thomas in 1952, one year before his untimely death.

The collection starts with a prologue in verse, a lyrical piece filled with beautiful natural imagery. While much of the poetry in the book deals with death and the persistence of life in unflinching terms, the beauty of Wales and its countryside seeps through in many of Thomas' poems. His poetry, in blank verse, draws on natural imagery, train-of-consciousness techniques and unusual metaphors to paint a picture, or rather, give vague substance to an idea or feeling without providing clear definition. It is only occasionally, as in "The hand that signed the paper", or "This bread I break" that his meaning is clear and easy to follow. These poems are not for the lazy mind to enjoy on a summer's day. They are challenging both mentally and emotionally. Apparently, Thomas held an immortalist view of life and believed in the perseverance of the human spirit but he seems, in these poems, to be struggling with the idea of death. He's probably not the best poet to read when depressed. If you are expecting a set of poems along the lines of "A child's Christmas in Wales" you may be disappointed with this. Occasional flashes of romantic lyricism shine in poems such as "A poem in October" or "Fern Hill" but the tone is mostly somber.

If I have a quibble with this book it is not with the poetry but with the edition. The book is entirely bare of any explanatory notes, footnotes, or references. There is a brief (one paragraph) note by the author at the start and a longer note by Vernon Watkins at the end describing the incomplete state of "Elegy" but nothing at all in between. While this allows one to enjoy the poetry in its raw state, Thomas's metaphors are often unusual to the point of inscrutability. Some background and definition of obscure and Welsh terms would seem necessary for full enjoyment of the poems. If you really want to understand Thomas' work you will be forced to do further research. If you just want to let the poetry wash over you then this is a great book by a truly great poet.

Shockingly Admitted, I Don't Like Thomas
If you're into this Welsh bard's poems, then this is the collection for you, because durn near everything is in here, but after a decade of trying, I'll admit, I can't make up from down in these poems, and I can read almost anything.

The music of a master maker
There are great lines and even great poems in the work of Dylan Thomas. "Do not go gentle into that good night, Rage rage against the dying of the light" " And Death Shall have no Dominion" Into the Zion of the water- bead and the synagogue of the ear of corn" And there is a music and power in his poems unsurpassed, especially when he is reading them. His life in a sense conformed to the image of a romantic poet, wild and raging and dissolute and self- destructive . He drank himself to death. And yet in his short life he managed to produce a handful of poems which are present in almost every anthology of modern poetry, canonical poems of great power and beauty.