1914: Dylan Thomas - Resources and General Discussion

Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)

Dylan Thomas was a welsh poet. As living by the pen alone, as a poet, was hard, Dylan Thomas took to reading tours and radio broadcasts, which in turn brought him a certain level of fame both at home and abroad.

The Love Letters of Dylan Thomas
Finished reading: 1 November 2012



The Love Letters of Dylan Thomas is a small volume of 84 pages, containing 35 letters written over the period between September 1933 and June 1953. They are a selection from a larger volume of letters, available as The Collected Letters of Dylan Thomas, with the same publisher.

This selection of The Love Letters of Dylan Thomas is a strange and disappointing publication. In a very short (1.5 page) introduction the apparent unnamed editor describes the book as "just a short selection" which gives its readership a glimpse of Dylan Thomas' life "in a way that is almost incomprehensible to the lost email generation." (p. v)

Love letters are a form of letter writing which is often infused with magic, and they are often considered to belong to the most beautiful among an author's letters "binding the reader by the spell of his words" (p. v).

The problem with The Love Letters of Dylan Thomas is that it does not define what are love letters and what not. Hence, the volume presents letters to nine different women. Some of these letters do not appear to be love letters at all.

The most creative and passionate letters are the first nine letters to Pamela Hansford Johnson, written over a 2-year period from Sept. '33 till Dec. '35, before het met his wife. Throughout the book, there are 15 letters to his wife Caitlin MacNamara. These letters are interspersed with incidental letters, usually just one or two seven other women. One of these is a letter to Edith Sitwell in March 1946. The unnamed editor characterizes this letter as "an attempt to rekindle a profitable friendship".

In 1952, Dylan's wife intercepted an unfinished and unsent letter to Marged Howard Stepney, whom the editor describes as rich and generous to Dylan Thomas. He apologizes to Cait saying that the letter was dirty and cadging and lying, and that he wrote it because I wanted to see what foul dripping stuff I could hurt myself to write in order to fawn for money.

The picture that emerges of Dylan Thomas is that of a cad, who entices women for money and influence, or simply some attention while away from home.

However, this image is possible only created by the clumsiness of the unnamed editor of the book, who fails to recognize that a successful author may get dozens of letters from admirers, and that a letter addressed to a woman with opening words such as "my love" or "my dear", etc. may express love or simply deep-felt attachment or friendship, while his wife's jealousy is probably an overreaction.

The editor describes Dylan's letter to his wife as an attempt to smooth her disgusted feathers. Disgusted feathers?

Perhaps it was a wise precaution of the editor to appear unnamed; an editor, who perhaps also belongs to the lost email generation.

Happy New Year. As I have very recently just finished two Thomas works - Under Milk Wood and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog, I will post my reviews up here shortly...

I hope to read some more of him during this centenary year. I have Miscellany One on the TBR shelf.

Thanks for dropping by, Paul.

I have two books, The death of the King's canary and Under Milk Wood in my mum's attic, but I don't think I'll be able to retrieve them.

Last week, I picked up Under Milk Wood in a bookstore, but haven't made up my mind about buying. I tried to find a download audio version on eMule, but there weren't any complete versions.

However, if several members here make an effort to read Under Milk Wood, I will buy a copy for the occasion.

I still have The Collected Stories, which I will definitely tackle to read this year.

Do you have access to a lending library? (For an audio Under Milk Wood - you should really try to listen to it.)

>5 Polaris-:

No, libraries in China are imposing buildings either without books (or piles of illegal copies) or collections under lock & key.

That is a great shame.

143. Selected poems of Dylan Thomas
Finished reading: 11 December 2014



The edition of Selected poems of Dylan Thomas by Dylan Thomas in the series of Penguin Modern Classics gives a representative overview of the poetic work of Dylan Thomas. I did not care much for his poetry. The early works, mostly seem high flown but devoid of meaning. The later work introduces people and in the later poems some recognizable sense of beauty and meaning can be discovered.

I began reading through his Collected Poems in late 2013, having read Seamus Heaney's essay on him in the redress of poetry. Oh yes and also I'd read Under Milk wood soon before. I loved the poems, the early poems powerful in their sense of body in creation. His turns of phrase so often so pleasing and possibly for reasons I cant quite explain. At times I got stuck, he could be dense and hard to digest, I am sure I don't claim to have followed all of them. And I have been seriously stuck for some months at 'Altarwise by owllight' as I was reading it with some notes but the book with them in was summoned back by the library, and I have not picked up again since -- in a way I respect that poem for what it does, in other ways I am frustrated by my own deficiencies in reading it, and at him, but I still like that he did it. So I didn't complete the poems in his centenary year, but I'll keep going, he's wonderful. I bought the new Collected poems edited by John Goodby (adding to the task!) and also a second hand copy of Poet in the making; the notebooks of Dylan Thomas which has the poems of his early workbooks which show how he developed them into adulthood, was using that fertile work for later work. I'd love to read more biography of him, when I get time and enjoyed the BBC programmes on him including the film about his last days in New York with a great leading actor (sorry I forget his name) - whom I saw interviewed on the beeb and asked to say typical interview stuff about the poems and man he refused and simply directed people to the poems to learn of the man...what more can or need be said. (Though I wondered if that film was a bit hard on Caitlin, but then what do I know, or any of us.)

>so pleasing and possibly for reasons I cant quite explain

I could not make out any meaning in the early poems; it is, as you said, about sound, and words I can appreciate poetry or prose as a repositry of (possible) grammar and language structures, and see the beauty of that, but it does not touch me personally. It is like some modern visual art that I enjoy seeing in a museum or gallery, but would not like to have on the wall at home.

I think poetry is of much greater significance to you, Tony, as you are a poet, and English is your mothertongue. For me, the early poems of Dylan Thomas did not get under the skin. But, I liked the later poems more.

I should probably have another look at the poems, by the time I get back to Beijing, next month.

As a teenager, I read Under Milkwood (aloud, of course). Last year, I did not come around to a re-read of it. I had also started, and will continue reading the short stories.

I wasn't having a go at all Edwin. We each get what we get. I understood English was not your mother tongue and that seemed relevant. I guess seing you had posted did prompt me.

I believe there is sense and meaning in many of the early poems, a very poetic sense. Often it is about the body and growth and birth and creation, in my memory anyway...but its naff to try and say it in prose...it is about sound but there is meaning and suggestion. For example 'light breaks were no sun shines'...now where would that be, I have ideas, suggested to me. But it can be like he's deliberately elusive, deliberately makes prosaic sense hard to get -- I think/feel/wonder if that was important to him, to demand to be heard on his terms. I felt there was a kind of alternative Genesis quailty and tone to some of the early work, and maybe some of it is a teenage tone seeking to speak. At other times in my life I may not have felt this. Heaney when he went back to them I think was disappointed they were not as he imagined in his memory.

I should have been posting as I was reading, I've been stuck for about six months. I make no claims to greater significance due to writing poetry - I feel we all have poetry in us, possibly often of slightly different types, style emphasis.

Some of the poems were also familiar to me, it may have been the right time for me to try and read them all. Best wishes for reading them more, I saw you read a selected, the collected can't be much longer (his own collected, poems chosen by him), I find it useful even when a poet does not speak in a way click to.