Book Description

Beginning in February 1952, Dylan Thomas made a series of memorable and historic recordings for a new record label called Caedmon. In fact, Dylan Thomas was the first to record for this new label, started by two 22–year–old women, Marianne Roney and Barbara Cohen. Little did they know that in addition to capturing a part of history they also launched an industry of spoken–word recording.

This collection not only contains the incredible Caedmon recording sessions, but also recordings from the BBC, CBC, and other archival material Caedmon originally published in the 1950s and 1960s.

Highlights include: "A Child's Christmas in Wales" and "Five Poems"; "Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night", his prose: Adventures in the Skin Trade and Quite Early One Morning, and his final work – Under Milk Wood, a play.

With stunning original album cover art, and an introduction read by former poet laureate Billy Collins, this unique collection includes not only Dylan Thomas reading his finest works, but also rare recordings of Thomas reading his favorite writers, including W.H. Auden and William Shakespeare.

Customer Reviews (11)

Pictures in my mind
The richness of his words create wonderfully clear pictures in your mind.He takes you "there", wherever "there" is, with effortless ease.

A Stunning Collection!
What a great treasure! Here you have Dylan Thomas and that incomparable voice of his all together in one spectacularly priced collection.

Never have I heard anyone able to express emotion and feeling with their voice like Dylan Thomas does. The only one who comes close is Richard Burton.

Buy it. Sit back. Relax and be carried away by the sheer beauty and power of one man's words and voice.

Dylan Thomas Collection
Excellent cd series.
Thomas' pipe-organ voice resonates on every track.
His wit and humor pushes the envelope for its time. Bobby socksers,the hang-over of those early Cold War years,post war America full of booms and busts and Levit-towns. Picture too a staid America, the 1950s campus life just before "the Cool" hit, before the Folk revival scene, pre Beats.

Now enter the mop-headed Welsh bard replete with his double entendre openings to audiences. Audiences who are mostly undergrads and academics. Thomas has them laughing in all the right places ... its poetry without a laugh track or safety net.

The readings are good, the explantions sometimes meandering but always enjoyable and highly listenable.

Recommend this to any school teachers, lovers of poetry, Britophiles, students... with a willingness to sit back, listen and have a master of the craft weave vistas of Welsh seaside villages, lush countrysides, closed gray coal pits, lecherous and harmless characters and everywhere there are forests to see for the trees.

The voice of a poet
No other poet I know of -reads his own poetry aswell as does Dylan Thomas.
There is the rich melliflousness and the booming strength- there is the mystery of the sounded word made musical. There is too the dramatic play and fun of a large childlike soul , suddenly sad and then in an instant mockingly critical.
Poetry is the deepest expression of feeling in words.
In this sense Thomas is an especially poet , whose poems can be felt not only when read in silence, but most especially when sounded by his own majestic and magnificent voice.

Dylan Thomas TheCaedmon CD Collection
It sounds like Dylan Thomas is in the room.His voice is clear.Poems are fabulous.Introductions are informative and interesting. ... Read more

Book Description
The most complete edition of the works of one of the twentieth century's greatest poets.

This new, revised edition of The Poems of Dylan Thomas is based on the collection edited by Thomas's life-long friend and fellow poet, Daniel Jones, first published by New Directions in 1971. Jones started with the ninety poems Thomas selected for his Collected Poems in 1952 (at a time when the poet expected that many years of work still lay ahead of him) and, after exhaustive research and consideration, added one hundred previously finished, though uncollected, poems (including twenty-six juvenile works), and two unfinished poems, and arranged them all in chronological order of composition, creating the most complete edition of Thomas's poems ever published.

This revised edition contains all the original material and incorporates textual corrections. Also included are an Introduction and concise notes by Daniel Jones, a brief chronology of the poet's life, and a compact disc containing vintage recordings of Thomas reading eight of his poems in his famous "Welsh-singing" style, making this edition of The Poems of Dylan Thomas a truly remarkable collection. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

A great Welsh Poet!
Some of Dylan thomas's greatest work.
I spend many hours just browsing through and marvelling at his command of the English Language. Recommended for all lovers of poetry.

The Definitive Anthology Of His Poetry
If you truly are a lover of great poetry than this book should be very satisfying. Over the years there have been several volumes that have tried to attempt to collect some of the best poems by Dylan Thomas but nonehas come close to how complete and accurate this book is. THE POEMS OF DYLAN THOMAS, collects practically every poem that he ever wrote during his lifetime. All of his greatest and best loved poems are here and an added bonus is the CD in the back flap of the book(a special treat by all means) which has the acclaimed poet reciting eight short poems which are also included in the book. Dylan Thomas only lived to the age of 39, but in his brief run here on planet earth he wrote some of the finest, romantic and beautiful poems of his generation. Poetry scholars and literary historians have called him the greatest poet of the 20th century and although there have been many great poets (too many to mention) he stands as one of the most well known and best loved poetic geniuses of all times. Great book of poems that I highly recommend for anyone that has ever been moved and stimulated by the beauty and euphoria that poetry like the ones contained in this beautiful book can bring to a person's soul.

The most powerful of all the modern poets
Asa reader of his own poems Dylan Thomas has no equal. The immense power, the great musicality , the depth of feeling are simply above those of other writers I know. Compare the tepid TS Eliot slowly measuring out his syllables, to the booming flow of Thomas' poetry.
But the voice on the C.D. is one thing, and the poems as we read them another.
The poems are often to me too unclear and mysterious. Yet they at their best have a richness, a power in feeling, a strength uniquely their own.
In his greatest poems there are great memorable lines' Do not go gentle into that good night, Rage, rage against the dying of the light " Or at the end of another great poem about dying , "After the first death there is no other"
As I feel his verse Thomas belongs with Wallace Stevens and Gerald Manley Hopkins and Yeats and Keats and Shakespeare as great makers and masters of their own special music.
What a treasure.

A popular poet with fine talents, and some immortal lines
Dylan Thomas is immortal for the phrase "rage against the dying of the light", and probably should be.He had a real gift for the music in words.At first it seems that they should all be set to music, but as you hear them and let them play in your mind, you realize they are already their own setting.Some of his poems have been set to music, but none improved.

While I praise his real and powerful gifts, I also want to note that there is a certain adolescence in his themes of dying and death that, for me, diminish his greatness.However, it has and continues to attract the young who, in the abundance of everthing that is youth, think it mature and so, so, sophisticated to pine for death.For example in his own epitaph, he is upset with the fact that he has to die and blames his mother for bringing him into a world where his fate is to feed worms.Please!This from a man who basically drank himself to death at a sadly early age (not tragically - drinking yourself to death is hardly tragic, it is stupid).

For me, his early poem "Woman on Tapestry" is powerfully beautiful and demonstrates his gifts and strengths.Or take a look at the vitality and rhythm of "The Countryman's Return" (It opens: "Embracing Low-falutin' London (said the odd man in a country-pot, his hutch in the fields, by a mother-like henrun)".That's pretty good stuff.

The CD with Dylan Thomas' voice is a nice addition because the music is all the more obvious.

Will you like Dylan Thomas?
Certainly, if you like poetry at all. Open the book at random and start listening to the sound as you read. OK---in my case, it's fallen open at this:
Shall gods be said to thump the clouds
When clouds are cursed by thunder,
Be said to weep when weather howls?
Shall rainbows be their tunics' colour?
So on one level, this is poetry for mouthing and savouring and enjoying like music. Technically, it's tight as a drum. See how the vowels are juxtaposed and notice the assonance and shape-rhymes at the end of the lines. Then comes the meaning. Dylan Thomas is not the simplest poet to understand, but he always has a strong, strident, moving argument to make that you can't forget, even if you don't agree. This edition includes recordings of the poet reading some of the verses in his strangely old-fashioned, but unforgettable voice. I first met Dylan Thomas's poems when I was 14, at a stormy, angry, poetry-writing age. That's a good moment to encounter a great poet and find out what else can be said and considered and felt. If it's Dylan Thomas, there's a strong chance he'll stay with you for the rest of your life. This is a book to leave around casually for others to find, especially if they're at a stormy, angry, poetry-writing age. If only more of us were, more of the time. ... Read more

Book Description
A classic New Directions book—revised for the 21st Century.

Dylan Thomas (1914-1953) prepared this volume in 1952—the author's choice of the ninety poems he felt would best represent his work up to that time—and it was published by New Directions in 1953 as The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas, shortly after his death. This book was then and remained, for all practical purposes, Thomas's "collected" poems and in that sense complete. However, with the 1971 publication of the 192 poems in The Poems of Dylan Thomas (also now available in a revised edition), Thomas's Collected Poems has naturally evolved to become Thomas's Selected Poems.

Thomas wrote his last poem, "Prologue," especially to begin this collection, and addressed it to "my readers, the strangers." Two unfinished poems are included in this edition: "Elegy," prepared by Vernon Watkins, and "In Country Heaven," prepared by Daniel Jones—both Welsh poets were life-long friends of Dylan Thomas. Textual corrections discovered over the course of forty years have now been incorporated, and a complete index of titles and first lines, as well as a brief chronology of the author's life, have been added.

As it has for half a century, this book includes the best of Dylan Thomas's poetry—"Light Breaks Where No Sun Shines," "The Force that Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower," "And Death Shall Have No Dominion," "Poem in October," "Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night," "The Hunchback in the Park," "In My Craft or Sullen Art," "In Country Sleep," and Thomas's poignant reflection on his youth, "Fern Hill." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

the Walt Whitman of Wales
Dylan Thomas takes free verse into the next level (and regular verse into the next universe "Do not go Gentle into that Good Night")

Dylan Thomas is one of the last of the great poets after W. B. Yeats.

Dylan Thomas reigns forever.

Words Well Written
Dylan Thomas creates poems that are great to speak and use words that are truly magically placed. In my opinion, his books are the best for this type of poetry, so the person who purchases this book will likely find themselves reading these, even if only to themselves, out loud. My copy of this book was published in the 1950s, however I hope to buy this paperback version to carry with me.

Dylan's greatness as a poet A power of feeling and music all his own
The greatness of Dylan Thomas is in his music and voice, a powerful rolling seasound. It is too in that whole mysteriously rich vocabulary, that unique diction of his own a diction which like that of Hopkins , and Dickinson seems to strike us as wholly original.
The greatness of Thomas is too in his human feeling. "Do not go gentle into that dark night, Rage Rage Against the Dying of the Light".
He stunsus startles and surprises us with lines of incredible beauty.
... Read more

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 wishedpreserved and should be owned by anyone who loves beautifully crafted language. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (18)

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 poemsunsurpassed, 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.

Wonderful Collection
This collection showcases Thomas' best work.I am always amazed by how few people know nothing by Thomas but "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night"If you are interested in fabulous poetry filled with mystery and beauty this is a wonderful book to start with.

Dylan Thomas as he wanted to be remembered
The question is, do you get this book for cheap, or the brand new POEMS OF DYLAN THOMAS [WITH CD] for not cheap.That depends on your wallet and your love of Thomas.

If you are new to Thomas, perhaps coming here intrigued after reading the often-anthologized "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night," I heartily recommend this book.These are all the poems Thomas wanted to live on in his name.They are excellent across the board, with a lot that I personally really loved.Thomas in some ways reminds me of Auden or Yeats (or even Blake) in terms of his mysticism and commitment to sound and form.I also think of Poe, who is often criticized by literary types, but much loved by the general public.There's a reason Thomas is popular.Even his most fantastical lines have a way of resonating.Many are unforgettable:

"Your mouth, my love, the thistle in the kiss?"

For those who already know they love Thomas, the new book + CD is a worthy investment.There's nothing wrong with this one though.It fits in a (coat) pocket and contains everything Thomas wanted, plus the posthumous "Elegy."It is tragic he died young, but he left some great work behind.This is it in a nutshell.Highly recommended, 5/5 stars. ... Read more

Book Description
Fifty years after its first publication in book form, Dylan Thomas's timeless prose poem is echoed by the rolling, evocative images of Caldecott Honor artist Chris Raschka — a beautiful gift for book lovers.

Bring out the tall tales now that we told by the fire as the gaslight bubbled like a diver. . . .

There are always Uncles at Christmas. And Aunts, of course, who might sing a little loudly after dinner. There are the neighborhood cats "sleek and long as jaguars and horrible-whiskered," the carols to sing at eerie houses, the Useful Presents and the Useless Presents, and the endless snow "shawling out of the ground." First published in HARPER'S BAZAAR some fifty years ago, A CHILD'S CHRISTMAS IN WALES showcases Dylan Thomas's genius for language and remains the poet's most popular prose work in the United States. Chris Raschka's fluid torn-paper illustrations honor the poet's words, evoking their musical cadences and bringing us a fresh appreciation for this most lyric work. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (24)

Raves for Dylan Thomas
A Child's Christmas In Wales CD: And Five Poems
Hurrah! Now I won't have to wait for the radio to play Dylan Thomas reading his wonderful Child's Christmas every Christmas. Truly a beautiful recording of the other poems as well.

Definitely not the best print version!
My goodness, these illustrations are ugly.They completely detract from the beauty of the language.Either read it out loud to a blind person or stick with the version illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman.

A Christmas Tradition
This reading of A Child's Christmas in Wales is tops! It wouldn't be Christmas for us without hearing Dylan Thomas tell his story. He recounts a holiday of simple, family and neighborhood doings, and paints a picture of snowy, seaside Wales of the 1920's.

from a little bit of Wales comes universally human warmth...
I love this story, as do all my children, who, from their earliest years, have not much struggled with the density of the language nor the scatteredness of the story.5 of my 8 great-grandparents are from Wales, and the remaining 3 have the blood in them as well, so maybe it is like drinking water for us.:-D Our minds are all scattered, and words, even English words ;-D, fall on us in clumps....which makes it doubly hard to keep a clean house. LOL

The sort of prose-poetry imaginative way of seeing and describing the world unique to Welshwomen and Welshmen and Welshchildren, which does not seek to keep up the pretense that history can be separated from myth, story and desire, and which requires loving with eyes wide open to [and eventually embracing] one's own and others' bumps, bruises and idiosyncracies included, is extraordinarily well represented here. So, by the way, is speaking and listening to the close and Holy darkness!

My favorite version isthe one illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman. To me she has captured the complexity of the Welsh personality best, though i have nothing to say against the other illustrators praised in these reviews.I DO have a warning for you: there are some skinny versions flying about which do not have the poem-story complete and correct. This sort of work cannot suffer removal or modification, IMHO.

gbg

The voice
If you have read A Child's Christmas in Wales, you know that it has to be a classic. But you can't fully appreciate it until you have heard Dylan Thomas read it. What a deep, expressive, poetic voice. For years, I have listened to the recording on a Caedman record. It is wonderful to have it on a CD. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Annoyingly?Who Goofed?
"Annoyingly" this page is devoted to the stories of Dylan Thomas; also"annoyingly", both the Publishers Weekly review as well as that of a disgrunted reader refer stories by Leslie Norris; Norris' book may be splendid; I don't know; I have read Dylan's stories and honor and love them (they are live things wearing incandescent prose -- believe me); perhaps Amazon could reassign the aforementioned reviews and those of us who -- on this page at least -- have (happily) written about the appropriate book will be left to bask unannoyed.

Prose poems perhaps
Was Dylan thomas the consummate craftsman?Indeed, he was; and took real delight in his gifts and his exercise of them; he was a Celtic bard in the truest sense of that role -- the lonely public/private man who carried within him the lyric history of his race, the love of his language and a very vocal sense of wonder over his role in life; that he had song, yes; that he was funny, loud, boisterous, cautious, selfish, rude, unforgettable -- all of that and more; he was the poet's poet and the singer for those who longed for lost boyhood, who raged at death and who marvelled at the all the world's words rediscovered in a dewdrop; his stories, like his poems, should be read aloud; there is an incantatory quality to them -- as if something profoundly old and grandfatherly were suddenly shared with the reader; Thomas himself was a great reader; to hear him is to savor him at his best and to feel deeply and sweetly the majesty and holy compulsion of our mother tongue; the stories, while less charged than the poems, nonetheless captivate and break into a kind of lyricism that gladdens the heart and restores the ear.If he wasn't the best of our poets, he was easily the most tuneful and spoke from a very deep place that only the purest of us can truly know.

Dylan Thomas Stories reviewed by Greg Kaiser aka agkaiser
With significant exceptions, "The Collected Stories" chronical the life, if read in that order, of a sad and melancholy man, who was aware of but unwilling to accept the burden on consciousness of the futility of modern life.Thomas lightened his load, by and by, with increasingly frequent jokes and essays into humour.In many ways the stories are an accurate account of the everyday absurdity of Everyman; by one who lived at the time personality was displaced by the development of commercial media hype. Thomas died at age 39 in 1953.If he'd lived a few more years he might have described to us the age of common emotion and undifferentiated humanity, which breaks down only under the influence of alcohol to anything interesting and never unique; that he interpolated and prophecied from his eavesdropping into the lives of his comtemporaries.(No, I don't think that sentence is too long and I think Dylan would have approved.)He didn't spare himself from his snooping.Much of the content is autobiographical.But like a reporter, he just tells us the facts.The inferences and insights are your own.You have to read this volume! END ... Read more

Book Description
An authoritative, fresh, and compelling look at the extraordinary life and enduring work of Dylan Thomas-the first in over ten years. In this riveting new account of the life of one of the most celebrated and contradictory figures of the twentieth century, acclaimed biographer Andrew Lycett peels back the layers of story that have accumulated around Dylan Thomas. When he died, in New York in 1953, Thomas was only 39 years old, and the myths soon took hold: he became the Keats and the Byron of his generation-the romantic poet who died too young, his potential unfulfilled. Making masterful use of original material from archives and personal papers, Lycett describes the development of the young poet, brings invaluable new insights to Thomas's youthful poetry and the themes that continued to appear in his work, and unearths fascinating details about the poet's many affairs and his tempestuous marriage to his passionate Irish wife, Caitlin.

Lycett uses as his overwhelming motif the deeply ambivalent forces in Thomas's life-"I hold a beast, an angel, and a madman in me"-the forces that allowed him to be a wild boy in public and a private poet of deep sensitivity, that helped him bridge the gap between modernism and pop, between the written and spoken word, between individual and performance art, between the academy and the forum. Throughout, the social and historical context of Thomas's struggles and accomplishments are vividly presented. The result is a poignant yet stirring portrait of the chaos of Thomas's personal life and a welcome reevaluation of the lyricism and experimentalism of his poetry, plays, and short stories. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Comprehensive and compact
It's a long book but surprisingly compact, and Lycett seems to have the happy knack of being able to condense the long drawn out memories of others into snappy paragraphs or two-liners.His previous book on the life of Ian Fleming raised the bar for James Bond studies and I am not surprised to see that his life of Thomas (who like Fleming cut his own brand of swaskbuckling throughout the English speaking universe) is also something of a triumph.It is the first biography of Thomas to set out properly his confusing travels to California (where I live)--his sojourns to San Francisco and LA (where he met Chaplin, Shelley Winters, Isherwood, etc) finally make some chronological and emotional sense.

Lycett is also good, as he was with Fleming, at showing particular moments in each man's career where popular enthusiasm brought their work to a new level of acceptance.For Fleming, of course, the filming of the Bond stories brought him an attention he had craved for years but then decided he didn't want.For Thomas, it seems to have been the publication in 1946 of DEATHS AND ENTRANCES that shook him up and created in a fiery fogre of fame and alcohol, a new Dylan Thomas, one cockily confident and supremely able to go about life with only a smile and a vast adoring public to sustain him.And, in each case, Lycett also sketches "the wife" tidily, so that we see how Ann Fleming and Caitlin Thomas pulled the strings--or failed to.

Hooray for Andrew Lycett, can't wait to see who you turn your sights on next.

Admirers as Enablers
Long ago, I came upon Dame Edith Sitwell's description of Thomas:"He was not tall, but was extremely broad, and gave an impression of extraordinary strength, sturdiness, and superabundant life. (His reddish-amber curls, strong as the curls on the brow of a young bull, his proud, but not despising, bearing, emphasized this.) Mr. Augustus John's portrait of him is beautiful but gives him a cherubic aspect, which though pleasing, does not convey ... Dylan's look of archangelic power. In full face he looked much as William Blake must have looked as a young man. He had full eyes--like those of Blake--giving him at first the impression of being unseeing, but seeing all, looking over immeasurable distances." Of course, she does not describe what was in his mind and heart. For that, we rely on what was revealed by his behavior during an avoidably brief life (1914-1953) and by what is suggested in what he wrote. Also, we have two excellent biographies. This one and another written by Paul Ferris.

Briefly, here is some background information about Thomas' life. He was born in the Welsh seaport of Swansea, Carmarthenshire, and received all of his formal education at the local grammar school. He then earned his living in a variety of jobs as an actor, reporter, reviewer, and handyman. At age 22, he married Caitlin Macnamara and thus began an especially tumultuous relationship which continued until his death. She bore him three children. For most of his adult life, he struggled to support his family (e.g. writing for the Ministry of Education) before serving in World War Two as an anti-aircraft gunner. Afterward, his struggles to support himself and family continued, even with writing assignments for the BBC. Then in 1950, he delivered the first of a series of readings of his works in the United States, returning twice more for additional tours in 1952 and 1953. Caitlin soon grew to hate the United States because (in her opinion) the adoration he received there activated, indeed encouraged his excessive appetites, especially for alcohol and for other women. One of my college English professors had accompanied Thomas during several of his binges in New York City in 1953. I asked him what Thomas had died of. He replied "Everything." His life ended prematurely but probably inevitably in San Vincent's Hospital in Manhattan on November 9, 1953. He was 39 years of age.

Credit Lycett with rigorous and comprehensive research on Thomas' life. He also had one significant resource which Ferris did not: Ferris. (Also Welch, Ferris was born about a mile from Thomas' childhood home.) There are passages in this book when it seems that Lycett is as charmed by Thomas as were so many others, giving the brilliant poet the benefit of the doubt when discussing his frequently offensive behavior, especially his mean-spirited abuse of family members (notably wife Caitlin) as well as of others who befriended him. (Ferris is far less forgiving of Thomas' misbehavior.) According to Thomas, his work provides "the record of my individual struggle from darkness toward some measure of light.....To be stripped of darkness is to be clean, to strip of darkness is to make clean." As both Lycett and Ferris clearly indicate, there were many times in Thomas' life when he disappeared into the "darkness" of his self-indulgences, cleansing only temporarilty whatever self-loathing may have driven him there.

Commissioned by the BBC for its Third Programme, Under Milk Wood was Thomas' last published work. It is much more a pageant or review rather than a classically structured drama, one in which Thomas celebrates his heritage in much the same spirit Edgar Lee Masters celebrates his in Spoon River Anthology. It is also worth noting that when he died, Thomas had been at work on several promising radio projects (e.g. The Town That Was Mad and Quid's Inn) which could have led to greater fame and fortune. Those who have heard recordings during which he reads from his works are already aware of his talents as a performer. (By the way, I have often wondered what Garrison Keeler's influences were when he first envisioned Lake Wobegon as the centerpiece of his Prairie Home Companion. Did they include Masters and Thomas?) His premature death denied him these promising opportunities and all others the pleasure of new works of poetic art he may well have produced, had he lived longer.

I rate this book so highly because of its wealth of carefully developed biographical material. However, as indicated earlier, it is important to keep in mind that Lycett allows Thomas far more latitude than does Ferris when commenting on Thomas' personal behavior. Many of those who knew him well despised him but countless others, few of whom knew him well, adored him. Their adoration apparently justified in his mind the excesses which eventually caused his death. In terms of literary criticism, I think Ferris has much more of value to say but I am grateful to both for helping me to gain a better understanding of the man whose reading of A Child's Christmas in Wales is among our family's greatest joys each holiday season.

A chilling and captivating tale
It is late. I am tired, but I have just finished a compelling book on a deeply compelling and tragic man. Dylan Thomas burned bright and fast, and this tale of drunken excess and amazing talent could have read like an exteneded episode of E! True Hollywood Story. It is the beauty of the words that raises Thomas's life up so high, the twisting of phrases, the power of poetry. This book made me want to throw my television off the balcony and embrace the world. Thomas was damaged goods, but at least he tried to live life to the full. He did more in less than 40 years than most writers do in a lifetime. A great biography.

A work of substance & solid scholarship
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

This was the first poem by Dylan Thomas I read while in college, and its words haunt me still. This poem, and others such as "Fern Hill," "A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London," "The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower," "Poem on His Birthday," "I See the Boys of Summer," and "Over Sir John's Hill" established him as the epitome of romanticism and one of the greatest poets of the 20th century.

Dylan Thomas,"the Rimbaud of Cwmdonkin Drive," was bornon Oct. 27, 1914, in Swansea, Wales. He died of pneumonia and acute alcoholic poisoning in New York City, during his fourth lecture tour in the United States, on Nov. 9, 1953. His final resting place, marked by a simple white cross, is in St. Martin's churchyard, Laugharne, in West Wales.

Andrew Lycett's Dylan Thomas: A New Life was published in England last year to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the poet's death. Lycett, a regular contributor to the Times (London), has written a thorough, astonishingly detailed study of Thomas' life. A cynic might describe this exhaustive biography as exhausting, for one needs patience and perseverance to wade through its intricate details.

Nevertheless, at the end, one is glad to have read this highly informative and scholarly work. One marvels at the amount of research needed to create such a sustained narrative.

As I read Lycett's work, the image of the prodigal son often rose to mind: the story of an irresponsible young man who "wasted his substance in riotous living." Much of the book is a sad chronicle of Dylan'smarathon pub crawling, multiple fornications, and shameless sponging off his friends.

Dylan once revealed his personality in a nutshell: "One: I am a Welshman; two: I am a drunkard; three: I am a lover of the human race, especially of women."

To put it bluntly: Dylan Thomas chased anything and everything in skirts (the gentlemandoth protest too much, methinks ... concerning his protestations of disinclination toward homosexuality). A pitiful alcoholic, he often drank his breakfast, lunch, and supper. He was forever cadging from his friends, "borrowing" the "loans" that he had no intention of repaying.

In a classic statement of his professional purpose, Dylan wrote: "I have a beast, an angel, and a madman in me, and my inquiry is to their working, and my problem is their subjugation and victory, downthrow and upheaval, and my effort is their self-expression."

Lycett describes Dylan Thomas as "this oddly religious man who lived outside any formal creed," and who, "caught between Muse [poetry] and Mermaid [a tavern], wrote of "the absurdity of life in the midst of mortality, and of the inevitability of death. [Dylan wrote] of the relativism of a world where good and bad are 'two ways / Of moving about your death.' He was not the first poet to see the indifferent universe . . . Shakespeare anticipated him by over four centuries. But Dylan gave this philosophy a modern existentialist perspective."

The great mystery, then, surrounding Dylan Thomas is this supreme contradiction: How could a wastrel who lived like the devil write with the pen of an angel? What heavenly muse inspired this secular humanist to compose poetry of transcendent beauty and sacred spirituality? The paradox is puzzling; strange and inexplicable are the ways of genius.

Lycett reveals the dark side of Dylan's tumultuous marriage to Caitlin Macnamara; the birth of their three children--Llewelyn, Aeronwy, and Colm Garan; and of Caitlin's decision to have four abortions.

Lycett also cites a comment that Nelson Algren made concerning Dylan: "You have to feel a certain desperation about everything either to write like that or to drink like that." Indeed, the story of Dylan Thomas is that of a man who lived a life of unquiet desperation. Some of his friends believed that this 40-a-day-man (two packs of cigarettes) drank his way into the grave because he had an overpowering death wish. Dylan Thomas had gazed into the abyss and had been horrified.

In the midst of a distressingly mediocre pop culture, Andrew Lycett, in Dylan Thomas: A New Life, offers a volume of depth and dignity, of scholarship and substance--an antidote to the mindless drivel of our time.The book contains 64 black-and-white photos. ... Read more

Book Description
In print for over forty years, this gem of lyric prose has enchanted both young and old from its very first edition and is now a modern classic.

Dylan Thomas (1914-1953), one of the greatest poets and storytellers of the twentieth century, captures a child's-eye view, and an adult's fond memories, of a magical time of presents, aunts and uncles, the frozen sea, and in the best of circumstances, newly fallen snow.

"One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment befor sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Exquisite holiday story
I received my copy of this wonderful book for Christmas when I was an exchange student in Great Britain in 1977.I have loved the story ever since, and try to read it aloud every year.This edition has beautiful woodcut illustrations which enhance the story and seem to really embody the spirit of the work.

Timeless Story.Beautiful Gift.*****
With this short story in verse, acclaimed Welsh Poet Dylan Thomas (1914-1953) exhibits a fierce mastery of imagery that reaches into his own beginnings in seaside Swansea to pull out Christmas reminiscence that, among other things, speaks of snowballs, sleeping uncles, wind-cherried noses, and "cats that slink and sidle over white back-garden walls."

The three copies of this version of "A Child's Christmas ... " I ordered earlier this year, arrived in my mailbox, this week, and I was really pleased to lay eyes them.I was a little disappoionted that the booklet no longer comes with the coordinating envelope that has made it so perfect for "gifting" for so many years, but the texture of the paper that covers the book, and Ellen Raskin's woodcut illustrations still set this publication in a class by itself.

I highly recommend this version of "A Child's Christmas in Wales" as a wonderful read and a choice gift.

It isn't for everyone. Some will find that even listening to the tale is "too much like work." Dylan Thomas does roll on.

There's little punctuation, so, I suggest practicing before reading aloud, but do read it aloud.The youngest of children love it!And, why not ... there are firemen and candy cigarettes, useful presents and useless ones ... lots of merriement for young and old.

... Read more

Book Description
'In the beginning was the three-pointed star, One smile of light across the empty face; One bough of bone across the rooting air, The substance forked that marrowed the first sun; And, burning cophers on the round of space, Heaven and hell mixed as they spun.' This is a rich collection of Dylan Thomas's best-loved poems and stories, as well as pieces he wrote for radio and magazines. The selection spans Thomas's writing lifetime, and it shows the full range of this tempestuous and meticulous artist who once cheerfully claimed that he had beast, angel and madman within him. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Delicious Dylan Thomas
From the glorious cover photograph of the pensive bard to the last word of poet, prose writer and playwright Dylan Thomas' "Under Milkwood" this is a volume most fine! The soft cover edition even has a milky patina to it, as much a pleasure to hold as the words inside are to read.
All the famous poems are here: "If I were tickled by the rub of love", "And death shall have no dominion", "Fern Hill" and everything else. This is an omnibus, after all. The short stories are almost as intense as the poems. Also included are transcriptions of some of his broadcasts. And here a suggestion, get the associated recordings to round out your Dylan Thomas experience for his voice was a wonder. He had been a radio broadcaster and on tour he was an unforgettable reader and the best interpreter of his own work there has ever been.
There is also a timeline of his career. The brief biography could be longer but that is being picky for who doesn't know his life was tragically far too short. His oeuvre speaks for itself. He was the greatest meddler of words since Shakespeare. Thomas' work will be read as long as English is spoken and this volume will be cherished by anyone who loves our language, for a lifetime. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Outstanding Memoir
This memoir is painful, beautiful, rugged. He shows himself to be proud, horrid, loving, sentimental. It is a small collection of short, powerful stories that span from childhood to young adulthood. He refers to himself at times in first person, other times in third (so you have to pay attention!). Growing into manhood, observing others and being observed. He expresses experiences of personal pride and humiliation with equal relish. Portraits of others in his life are humorous, admiring and at times sad. Hanging out with odd-balls; learning about women. It may have been a simpler time for technology, but the emotional struggles, the economic realities, the physical exertion required in a life in early 20th century Wales were harsh. All-in-all, this book is unforgettable.

Too good to be ignored
I would rather read this book than any by James Joyce.Thomas may be remembered for his wonderful poems, but his short pieces are, under no circumstances, to be ignored.

Thomas writes of his youth, which is asubject that many writers have attempted to write about, and where theyfall short he excells.The stories are nothing but fun.Actually, theyare more than fun; they are often beautiful.By all means, READ THIS!

Different and cool.
It's been a while since I read this book, but I wanted to be the first one to review!!The book was filled with small excerpts from Dylan Thomas' life, many of which dealt with surreal type encounters.The first part ofthe book seemed to lag somewhat, but the last story got me hooked and thenended in a very odd way, which was really cool.Maybe I shouldn't bewriting this, I'm no lit expert.I'd reccommend it though. ... Read more

Album Details
Not Only Reading of his Own Work, but also Dramatic Readings of Dr Faustus, Together with Interviews with the Poet. ... Read more

Book Description
Because Dylan Thomas often wrote as much for the sound of his poetry as for its meaning, he was extraordinarily well-suited to the task of interpreting his own works on audio, the more so for his unforgettably rich voice and dramatic style. These recordings are the preservation of a unique literary resource, a fascinating introduction to the complete experience of Dylan Thomas' manipulation of language. The poem in this collection are those that he most often chose for his famous public readings and can therefore be considered the ones Dylan Thomas himself wanted us to hear. ... Read more

Book Description
The beauty and power of Dylan Thomass voice are captured here in a stunning collection of letters to his wife Caitlin, as well as his various lovers and close female friends. With a style as grand and lyrical as his poetry, Thomas expresses his affection in letters that are sensual, uninhibited, romantic, funny and always loving.

The Love Letters of Dylan Thomas is a look at Dylan Thomas as a poet and as a man. The letters portray details of Thomass personal life, showing him at his most open and passionate. At the same time, the brilliance of his words represents the breadth of his talent and the power of the lost art of letter-writing. This book is a tribute to the art of Dylan Thomas and an inspiration to lovers, poets and writers everywhere.


I love you more than anybody in the world. And yesterday-though it may be lots of yesterdays ago to you when this wobbly letter reaches you-was the best day in the world in spite of dogs, and Augustus woofing, and being miserable because it had to stop. I love you for millions and millions of things, clocks and vampires and dirty nails and squiggly paintings and lovely hair and being dizzy and falling dreams.
-from a letter to his wife, Caitlin ... Read more

Amazon.com
This new edition of Paul Ferris's perceptive biography, which was originally published in 1977, is primarily notable for its frank portrait of the poet's marriage to Caitlin Macnamara Thomas, who died in 1994. "The essential truth about the Dylan-Caitlin relationship," Ferris writes, "was that his dependent nature left him vulnerable in later years when his wife withdrew her affection and became blatantly promiscuous." Yet the author is not unsympathetic to Caitlin, whose biography he wrote in 1993. The accounts of Thomas's raucous, drunken visits to America, where he died in 1953 at age 39, will certainly incline readers to forgive anything his wife did in revenge. The book's principal strengths remain what they were in 1977: a knowledgeable, in-depth account of the poet's childhood in Wales (Ferris himself was born a mile from Thomas's childhood home); a lucid disentangling of myth from fact in both interviews and contemporary sources; and a sensitive understanding that "behind the public cavortings was a private agony." This is Ferris's real subject, the agony of a boy who was "pretty ... spoiled ... the darling of the family," and who never managed to grow up enough to create a life that would support his poetic gifts. It's a sad story but a fascinating one. --Wendy Smith Book Description
Mining new material, including personal letters from Thomas himself, Paul Ferris recounts the life of this tragic figure

"A hilarious, shocking, sad story...a brilliant book."
-Kingsley Amis

Dylan Thomas's life and work have made him a legendary figure in the decades since his death, amidst alcohol and debts, in New York at the age of thirty-nine. At the heart of his achievement are a few dozen poems and stories which, together with his "play for voices," Under Milk Wood, haunt the imagination and give his writing a broader appeal than he could have envisioned in his lifetime.

Consumed by his vocation as The Poet, ever doubting his own talent, Thomas spent much of life reflecting upon his own worth. But beyond his writing is the checkered figure of the man himself: often comic, at times in despair, always self-obsessed, in the end defeated by his own nature. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Preoccupied with littleness
Having read John Malcolm Brinnin's account of Dylan Thomas in America and Caitlin Thomas's autobiographical work LEFTOVER LIFE TO KILL I find this biography fair and comprehensive.It contains appropriate scholarly apparatus.Both Dylan and his sister Nancy had great imaginations.Dylan's father came from a rural family.He became a schoolmaster.He grew to be an unhappy man.Thomas poems are songs about mysteries without solution.They are melancholy, Celtic, non-English.Thomas denied the influence of Gerard Manley Hopkins.He liked technical virtuousity.In school he was protected by being his father's son.

In 1935 he met Vernon Watkins and came to respect him as a poet and as a critic.Thomas also came to know Geoffrey Grigson, Norman Cameron, and A.J.P. Taylor.The idea developed that Thomas needed to be protected from women and drink and that he had difficulty with his lungs, bronchitis.Pamela Hansford Johnson was a girlfriend in the early years.In 1936 Edith Sitwell became Thomas's chief advocate.

In 1936 he met Caitlin.They married in 1937.As he grew older he wrote less quickly.By age twenty one he had written half of the poems in his COLLECTED POEMS.He wrote surrealist stories and reviews for which he was paid poorly.Caitlin was buxom and he was thin.In 1938 they went to Laugharne.For Thomas Wales was a place and a frame of mind.The reader is struck by how early in Dylan Thomas's career themes menacing survival surfaced.There are issues of poverty, drink, work for the BBC, revision of work to evade censors, and merry times in London versus periods of restraint and work in Wales.Stories for PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG DOG and ADVENTURES IN THE SKIN TRADE were set out and virtually completed when Thomas was in his early twenties.

Thomas managed to avoid service during World War II.The war interferred with the sale of his writings.He wrote film scripts.The work was facile.John Davenport felt that he had lost his lyrical gift and was left with nothing but a public personality.

Poetry returned at the end of the war."Fern Hill" dates from 1945.UNDER MILK WOOD and "A Child's Christmas in Wales" were started.After the war he ws able to work for the Third Programme for the BBC.Roy Campbell found him to be the best reader.He was in demand as an actor and speaker. Edith Sitwell was aghast that he wanted to go to America.For the time being the family went to Italy.

In 1949 the Boat House at Laugharne came on the market.Dylan often spoke of dying young.Caitlin felt that he was never too keen on life.The family moved to the Boat House in 1949."Over Sir John's hill" was produced.It was related to "Fern Hill" and "Poem in October."

Dylan received the long awaited invitation to America.UNDER MILK WOOD was still largely unwritten.He lived an eccentric life there without paying much attention to the country.His guide and advisor was John Malcom Brinnin.His reading while on the tour at Mount Hoyoke was described as a miracle.Once reading he took hold of himself.In 1950 Dylan Thomas's writing was more highly regarded than it was later.

Little of the money earned in America in 1950 found its way to Wales.In 1951 "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" was addressed to his father who was ill. Dylan and Caitlin arrived in America in January 1952.The visit was part farce, part tragedy.Social occasions were difficult.Dylan's favorite bar in New York City was the White Horse Tavern.Dylan and Caitlin stayed in the Chelsea Hotel.

Thomas entered into an agreement with Caedmon, a company started by two alert young women, and recorded "A Child's Christmas in Wales."COLLECTED POEMS1934-1952 was published in November.The review that most pleased Dylan was by Stephen Spender.For understanding the magic of the poet's function Dylan was indebted to his father who was now dying.

In 1953, contrary to legend, Dylan was not really a penniless poet.He was, however, always uncertain of his powers, always consumed with his littleness.He returned to America in April 1953.He was still working on UNDER MILK WOOD.He returned to England in June.Milk Wood revisions dragged on through the summer.

In October 1953 Dylan returned to New York.His troubles had begun long before.His father and his sister died that year.He, too, was to die.Morphine, insult to the brain, something triggered the coma from which he did not emerge. ... Read more