Dylan Thomas Poems
Get ready for our next meeting where we will be discussing the poems of Dylan Thomas.
Thomas’s poetry is famous for its musicality, most notable in poems such as Fern Hill, In the White Giant’s Thigh, In Country Sleep and Ballad of the Long-legged Bait. Do not go gentle into that good night, possibly his most popular poem, is unrepresentative of his usual poetic style.
Thomas’s verbal style played against strict verse forms, such as the villanelle Do not go gentle into that good night. His images were carefully ordered in a patterned sequence, and his major theme was the unity of all life, the continuing process of life and death and new life that linked the generations. Thomas saw biology as a magical transformation producing unity out of diversity, and in his poetry he sought a poetic ritual to celebrate this unity. He saw men and women locked in cycles of growth, love, procreation, new growth, death, and new life again. Therefore, each image engenders its opposite. Thomas derived his closely woven, sometimes self-contradictory images from the Bible, Welsh folklore and preaching, and Freud.
In reply to a letter in which the writer expressed their love for his poetry but was concerned that they may have misunderstood what the poet meant, Thomas replied that a poem was like a city having many entrances: poetry was the apex of culture, the spire of civilisations, the scalpel of emotion and the anvil of thought, whispering and bellowing the unsayable with mere words…
December 29th, 2009 at 3:06 pm
I actually have read this specific collection. Do you think I can read a different Dylan Thomas book that has some of the same but also some different poems in it.
December 29th, 2009 at 3:07 pm
That sounds like a great idea Bill, please find one that is new to you and share your insights. The same goes for any other members who might want to read a different collection of poems.