Customer Reviews (8)

Wrong book recieved
I see that the problem is not corrected as I too recieved the Dylan Thomas Bio.

Reason for the Mix-Ups
Just wanted to attempt to explain the mixups mentioned below, since we have received an order for this book by mistake. For some reason that is entirely unclear, Pop-O-Mania (published in 1997) seems to share the exact ISBN as Paul Ferris' 1977 biography of Dylan Thomas. Amazon's system has equated these two books and created a hybridized record for them (hence the 1977 publishing date and incorrect page count for Pop-O-Mania noted in the item details). We will be in touch with Amazon about the problem.

Pop-O-Mania
What a rip off. I too was sent a book about Dylan Thomas and never have gotted the book I ordered. It seems that Amazon doesn't care because I have repetely tried to contact someone there and have met only dead ends. Doesn't Amazon have a customer service that handles such matters. I don't even know how to return the Dylan Thomas book that I didn't want in the first place. I wonder if I had ordered that book I would have gotten the one I wanted instead?

Who is Dylan Thomas?
And why did I receive his biography instead of the Pop-o-mania book I ordered?

WRONG BOOK ARRIVES!!!!!!
Dan's right, I received the Dylan Thomas book, too.The real thing is now conveniently priced at double the stated price of $5.25!SOMEONE FIX THE PROBLEM! ... Read more

Product Description
This is the definitive edition of Dylan Thomas's poetry, containing all of the poems which he himself wished to perserve. The poet made his selection in 1952, the year before his death, and wrote especially for it the beautiful "Author's Prologue," addressed to "my readers, the strangers." In 1956, the collection was augmented by the addition of the poem "Elegy," for which sixty pages of manuscript lines were found in Thomas's papers after his death, and which was edited by his friend, the poet Vernon Watkins. Those lines were written in memory of the poet's father, but they speak to us also, in image and feeling, of Dylan Thomas himself. Published gy New Directions, 1957 revised reprint of the 1953 edition. Library of Congress Number: 53-7766 Red polished cloth boards, 223 pp, with dust jacket. Frontpiece photo by Marion Morehouse. ... Read more

Amazon.com Audiobook Review
Listeners will cherish the opportunity to hear Dylan Thomas soar and swoop through the glorious language of powerful poetry. The lyrical, almost musical quality of his writing was intended to be read aloud; here, from original recordings made in 1949, '50, and '52, Thomas is most effective, reading many of his own poems and classic works by masters such as Thomas Hardy, W.H. Auden, and W.B. Yeats. Unfortunately, even with the wonders of modern digital remastering, there are several instances where poor audio quality makes for difficult listening. However, if the choice is to hear Dylan Thomas through hissing and popping or not to hear him at all, the former is far more desirable. (Running time: 1.5 hours, 2 cassettes) --George LaneyBook Description
And Death Shall Have No Dominion, A Winter's Tale, On Reading Poetry Aloud and other selections. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

The greatest poet of the C20?
When you say that a poet is great (eg Wordsworth or Plath or Auden or Frost) you really mean that a handful of poems have stood the test of time since it would be asking too much for any poet's entire output to be excellent.Therefore Dylan Thomas stands head and shoulders above the majority of C20 poets - with the possible exception of Phillip Larkin - and when you add that voice!Unfortunately Thomas had a penchant for obscurity - as here in "Death shall have no dominion".Nevertheless, although he speaks with no trace of a Welsh accent (despite the fact that virtually all his greatest poems were inspired by Wales and that he himself was profoundly Welsh), his readings of his own works are again so far above other poets' rather milk-and-water efforts that any opportunity to hear one of the world's greatest artists should be embraced.Here is one such opportunity.Unique and compelling above all other modern poets.What else can be said?

Mesmerizing and moving
Dylan Thomas, in spite of all the hype and misinformation and gossip, still looms larger than almost any other Twentieth Century poet (only Sylvia Plath and e.e. cummings, perhaps, are comparable).And this is allthe more amazing when one considers how actually small the total of hisoutput was.To listen to him read his poetry, though, is a profoundexperience.His reading of "Lament", one of his greatest poems(in my opinion), is riveting.The cadence of his rich voice, with hisWelsh accent and sonorous vowels, reveling in the sheer sounds and themultifarious allusions in the meaning, is unforgettable.Now if they canremaster and issue it on CD---!But it's worth suffering the technicalcrudities of the recording to hear this great poet and equally greatreciter.

Incredible
Listening to Dylan Thomas gives you some idea what he must have been like - on those late nights at the White Horse Tavern.These tapes of Thomas are brilliant. ... Read more

Product Description
178 pp, dark blue cloth hardback, gold lettering on spine ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

An excellent study of a great poet
William T. Moynihan says that this study is only for those who believe that Thomas at very least wrote a handful of great poems. Drawing on previous studies and especially on Thomas letters Moynihan illuminates the work of Thomas. He shows how Thomas is often an unreliable reader of his own poetry, and also makes a strong case for Thomas a deeply religious poet. He connects the ' life force' in Thomas with that in D.H. Lawrence shows Thomas connection to the Welsh countryside and bardic tradition.He also shows how conscienscious a craftsman Thomas was and how he fashioned in his collected poems a work of great symbolic and mythic unity. In his summary Moynihan maintains that one year before his death Thomas 'had, for all practical purposes completed his vision of the human condition, the unity of birth, fall and regeneration. Imperfect, truncated, and ambiguous in many particulars, 'Collected Poems' nevertheless marks a completed esthetic. The highly imaginative existence revealed in this esthetic together with his singular importance as a neo- romantic poetand his score of superb lyric poems, mark Dylan Thomas as one of a half dozen major poets writing in English in the first half of our century."
This is a very rich study and will be of considerable help to readers of Thomas. ... Read more

Book Description
“Only your eyes are unclosed to see the black and folded town fast, and slow, asleep”

Completed only a month before Dylan Thomas died, Under Milk Wood is an inspired and irreverent account of life and love in a small coastal village in Wales one spring day. Full of raucous energy and lyrical passion, it is the most complete expression of Thomas' unique perspective on the human condition.

Called “a play for voices” by the author himself, Under Milk Wood premiered in 1953 with Thomas and five American actors reading the parts and was preserved, almost by chance, in this remarkable recording. Here is the author's greatest work rendered as he himself directed, in his own famous voice that captures the lively melodic essence of the work itself.

Featuring Dylan Thomas with Sada Thompson, Nancy Wickwire, Ray Poole, Dion Allen, and Allen F. Collins

This is the only recording ever made with Thomas in the cast, and it owes its existence to the chance thought someone had just before curtain of setting up the little tape recorder that was at hand and laying a microphone on the floor at the center of the stage. Although a studio recording for Caedmon was planned, Thomas did not live to do it. That this recording was not erased or lost or thrown away remains some kind of miracle.

Customer Reviews (14)

Some memorable figures and a wonderful cast of characters
I recently read this while on vacation. The entire cast of characters is wonderful, wonderfully quirky, yet somehow very "normal". It is hard to describe genre-wise as it reads differently than how it was apparently intended - as a play for radio. But it works. A town of 500, with three quaint streets, a postman who reads the mail to all the (illiterate) inhabitants, my favorite couple in literature (Mr. and Mrs. Cherry Owen - she has two husbands, one drunk and one sober)and one of the most touching characters, Bessie Bighead, who was kissed once while not looking and never again despite looking... Fun!

"Time passes.Listen.Time passes."
Written as a "play for voices" for the BBC, this work was originally performed in 1954, with Richard Burton as the First Voice, connecting all thirty-three characters--men, women, and small children.Depicting one full day in the life of a small town in Wales, Thomas shows its motley residents as they awaken, perform their daily tasks, socialize and gossip, and daydream about the past that might have been and the future that may yet offer hope.As is always the case with Thomas, the "play" is full of alliteration and various kinds of rhyme, with nouns and adjectives used as verbs to convey action and sense impressions simultaneously. A wry humor and honesty of feeling make the work engaging for the listener/reader and charmingly illustrative of a time and place now gone.

Individual characters come alive through their own voices and through the gossip of others, spread by the postman and by neighbors.When night falls and the residents retire, their additional losses and disappointments, along with their escapes into dreams, are given voice and poignancy. Polly Garter, with her numerous children by numerous fathers, dreams of Willie Weasel, a very small man who was the love of her life.Captain Cat, the blind bell-ringer, thinks of all the sailors he knew who died at sea and Mr. Pugh dreams of poisoning his wife.

Simple songs add to the realism and the sense of character and place. An elegiac song by Polly Garter, as she remembers Willie and compares him to her other lovers, conveys an almost palpable sadness and makes Polly one of the most memorable characters.A humorous singing game by children adds to the realism, and young Gwenny's song to three very young boys is full of cheeky humor.Filled with the hurly-burly of everyday life in a small town in 1950s Wales, this and A Child's Christmas in Wales are among Thomas's most beloved works.Mary Whipple

starless and bible black & the sunny side of the street
I was first attracted to Dylan Thomas after studying James Joyce's The Dubliners at high school. I must say that in my opinion Thomas's play/poem makes a surprisingly good film, which is sadly not available thrugh Amazon.com, but to say this play for voices is delightful would be misleading, as this deep study of the underbelly of a small fishing village is about a peculiar kind of nationalism that is both celebratory and critical.

What makes it such a great experience is how the language grabs you, and you have to listen to every word, so it is intense. The narrator begins his description of the sleeping town of Llareggub from Milk Wood, above the town, then enters the cobbled streets to observe and eavesdrop, over a twenty-four hour period, dipping into the thoughts, reminiscences and dreams of the townsfolk.

Since Dylan Thomas died in 1953, and this was one of his last works, the world he describes is fifty years old and seems somewhat quaint today. But his rich language on occasions soars with the romance of feeling for the beauty of his nativeland (the vicar's morning address to the town, with nobody listening, is just wonderful), and love of its people.

Nevertheless, in relating the sexual dreams and fantasies and activities of the town and the world of men and women a touch of gothic intrudes. There are oppositions at play between the open-hearted, sexually generous women and the close-minded wives, the ecstatic Organ Morgan the church organist and his petty shopkeeper wife ("a martyr to music"), the mischievious butcher's subversions, numerous attractions and solicitations between adults and the budding sexuality of the young, the stultified love of Sinbad the barman, and an unscrupulous postman and his nosey-parker wife.And many other endearing characters.

The portrait Thomas paints of the town under Milk Wood is tainted by his own world-view, resentful of the Church, the lack of ambition and other provincialities. There's an amazing amount of activity in the town, apart from its economy, lots of drinking, sexuality and folksong, but despite the evidence of bad-blood the community seems to thrive on love and an underlying generosity of heart that allows for the bounty that all life brings.

These days I'm not a great lover of poetry, and that's what this play for voices is, but Under Milk Wood still works for me.

What ?
While I'm a long time fan of Dylan Thomas's prose and poetry, I've never understood the fascination with this sloppy, non-sensical play.

It is, to me, a moment when Thomas stopped being Thomas and made a clumsy attempt to emulate James Joyce.The result is a confusing and pointless play.

That said, the man was a marvel.Read his poetry, read "Adventures In The Skin Trade" and "Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Dog."

Something for everybody in Thomas' exquisite singsong dialog
I saw this play at the UW Drama School this spring, and it was by far the best play I'd seen all year -- so I ran right out and bought the hard copy to read.Could not put it down:and I just loved being swept away in the rhythmic current of Thomas' playful, wonderful river of speech.Satire and songs, cruelty and flirtation, dreams and ghosts, stirring eroticism and sweetness fertilize the highly alliterative and sensual text.The whole delightful, unforgettable short play makes a small Welsh fishing village seem like a living organism, where even the ground shifts and swells with the unspoken will of the long-dead and the presence of sea-captains now only legends.Get it on tape, if at all possible! ... Read more

Product Description
This Audiofy audiobook chip packs a full 5 hour reading of "The Essential Dylan Thomas" on a tiny memory card. A single Audiofy audiobook chip, hardly larger than a stamp, holds a complete digital audiobook, and saves the last listening position automatically, unlike CDs. With an SD memory card slot or low-cost adapter - like those for digital cameras - this Audiofy audiobook chip can be played on Microsoft Windows and Apple Macintosh desktop computers or laptops (Microsoft Windows XP/2000/Me/98, or Apple Mac OS X 10.3.9 and above) or transferred to Apple iPod media players. Audiobook chips also move seamlessly to most Palm OS and Pocket PC handheld PDAs with SD expansion slots, as well as Treo and Windows Mobile "smartphones" (Palm OS 5.2 or Windows Mobile 2002 and above)... This varied, well-chosen selection brings into one set the best of Dylan Thomas. Here is the legendary recording of "Under Milk Wood," with Richard Burton and Richard Bebb as narrators; but here also are two radio productions he wrote before that great classic, and though interesting in their own right, they show how "Under Milk Wood" grew gradually in his imagination. Thomas was a charismatic if idiosyncratic performer of his own poetry and stories and here is a representative selection. Performances of Dylan Thomas have since moved on and the greatness of the writer as a poet and storyteller are perhaps best heard in new recordings by actors of our own time. Here Bebb, Madoc and Hughes share some of his finest, most challenging and endearing works. ... Read more