Tag: Dylan Thomas
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Warmongers (Dylan Thomas)
Here is a Dylan Thomas poem that’s, in essence, simple and straightforward. It was written in the mid 1930s, with memories of WW I still fresh, and tensions already building towards WW II. In 1934, Thomas wrote a newspaper article is which he said that “war is a capitalist machine utilised for the benefit of…
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Holy Spring (Dylan Thomas)
Sometimes, when people first read through a Dylan Thomas poem, they say, ‘What on earth is he on about?” And there are times when he reminds me of someone who needs to get so much in, that he crams his suitcase close to bursting point; or reminds me of Einstein’s e=mc2 equation, which compresses an…
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Over Sir John’s Hill (ii) (Dylan Thomas)
This poem is one of those written while the poet was living in Carmarthenshire, in the Boathouse overlooking the estuary of the rivers Taf and Towy, in sight of nearby Sir John’s Hill. To begin to do justice to this feast of linguistic brilliance and poetic virtuosity would demand many a page. In this post,…
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Over Sir John’s Hill (i) (Dylan Thomas)
This poem is one of those written while the poet was living in Carmarthenshire, in the Boathouse overlooking the estuary of the rivers Taf and Towy, in sight of nearby Sir John’s Hill. To begin to do justice to this feast of linguistic brilliance and poetic virtuosity would demand many a page. In two posts,…
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And Death shall have No Dominion (Dylan Thomas)
This is one of Dylan Thomas’s earliest poems, and one that he loved to speak out loud (loud meaning loud). It’s about what, if anything, is likely to happen to us after we die. There are two Biblical references. One of these gives us the title, and the 1st and 9th lines of each of…
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Poem on his Birthday (part iii) – Dylan Thomas
Stanza 9. The struggle between belief in God and undermining doubt continues from stanza 8, where Thomas ‘prays .. faithlessly to Him‘. The ‘young Heaven’s fold‘ of stanza 7 is now ‘old and air shaped‘ like a blown up balloon, thin-skinned and liable to burst, especially if threatened by ‘souls‘, like Thomas’s, ever disposed to…
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Poem on his Birthday (part ii) – Dylan Thomas
Stanza 5. This part of the poem begins with a moment of quietness, as the poet imagines one of the ‘switchback’ waves of stanza 1 being halted in mid ‘swing‘ and forming a ‘cavernous‘ space, in the ‘silence‘ of which ‘thirty-five bells sing’, one for each year of Thomas’s life. These, reminiscent of ships’ bells,…
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Poem on his Birthday (part i) – Dylan Thomas
Stanza 1. In this poem, it’s Thomas’s ‘thirty-fifth‘ birthday. It’s just another ‘sandgrain‘ day in the ongoing hourglass of his life, except that it’s the half-way point in the Biblically allotted ‘three score years and ten’. The ‘mustardseed sun‘, however, the small, orange sun of late October, is more than three-quarters of the way along…
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In Country Heaven (Dylan Thomas)
This poem was left unfinished at the time of Thomas’s death in 1953. There was an early draft of 43 lines, and this later re-written section of 16 lines. It’s a poem that arose from a harrowing vision Thomas had of the Earth’s destruction, the atomic bombing of Japan having made such a possibility terrifyingly…
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Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night (Dylan Thomas)
I sometimes quote a favourite Joseph Campbell saying, “Follow your bliss”. My bliss, at the moment, is Dylan Thomas. Having written 3 successive posts, I’ve decided to delete and update 2 previous ones. “Do Not Go Gentle” is a counterpart to the “Elegy”, both having to do with his father. “Elegy”, which I recently wrote…
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