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Poetry

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Poetic style and influences

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Thomas's refusal to align with any literary group or movement has made him and his work difficult to categorise.[1] Although influenced by the modern symbolism and surrealism movements[citation needed] he refused to follow such creeds.[need quotation to verify] Instead, critics[which?] view Thomas as part of the modernism and romanticism movements.[2] Elder Olson, in his 1954 critical study of Thomas's poetry, wrote of "[...] a further characteristic which distinguished Thomas's work from that of other poets. It was unclassifiable."[3] Olson continued that in a postmodern age that continually attempted to demand that poetry have social reference, none could be found in Thomas's work, and that his work was so obscure that critics could not explicate it.[4]

Thomas's verbal style played against strict verse forms, such as in the villanelle "Do not go gentle into that good night". His images appear 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.[need quotation to verify] Thomas saw biology as a magical transformation producing unity out of diversity, and in his poetry 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. Therefore, each image engenders its opposite. Thomas derived his closely woven, sometimes self-contradictory images from the Bible, Welsh folklore, preaching, and Sigmund Freud.[5][date missing][need quotation to verify] Explaining the source of his imagery, Thomas wrote in a letter to Glyn Jones: "My own obscurity is quite an unfashionable one, based, as it is, on a preconceived symbolism derived (I'm afraid all this sounds wooly and pretentious) from the cosmic significance of the human anatomy".[6]

Who once were a bloom of wayside brides in the hawed house
And heard the lewd, wooed field flow to the coming frost,
The scurrying, furred small friars squeal in the dowse
Of day, in the thistle aisles, till the white owl crossed

From "In the white giant's thigh" (1950)[7]

Distinguishing features of Thomas's early poetry include its verbal density, use of alliteration, sprung rhythm and internal rhyme, with some critics detecting the influence of the English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins.[8] This[clarification needed] is attributed[by whom?] to Hopkins, who taught himself Welsh and who used sprung verse, bringing some features of Welsh poetic metre into his work.[9] When Henry Treece wrote to Thomas comparing his style to that of Hopkins, Thomas wrote back denying any such influence.[9] Thomas greatly admired Thomas Hardy, who is regarded[by whom?] as an influence.[8][10] When Thomas travelled in America, he recited some of Hardy's work in his readings.[10]

Other poets from whom critics believe Thomas drew influence include James Joyce, Arthur Rimbaud and D. H. Lawrence. William York Tindall, in his 1962 study, A Reader's Guide to Dylan Thomas, finds comparison between Thomas's and Joyce's wordplay, while he notes the themes of rebirth and nature are common to the works of Lawrence and Thomas.[11][nb 1] Although Thomas described himself as the "Rimbaud of Cwmdonkin Drive", he stated that the phrase "Swansea's Rimbaud" was coined by poet Roy Campbell.[12][13][nb 2] Critics have explored the origins of Thomas's mythological pasts in his works such as "The Orchards", which Ann Elizabeth Mayer believes reflects the Welsh myths of the Mabinogion.[14][15][nb 3] Thomas's poetry is notable for its musicality,[16] most clear in "Fern Hill", "In Country Sleep", "Ballad of the Long-legged Bait" and "In the White Giant's Thigh" from Under Milk Wood.

Thomas once confided that the poems which had most influenced him were Mother Goose rhymes which his parents taught him when he was a child:

I should say I wanted to write poetry in the beginning because I had fallen in love with words. The first poems I knew were nursery rhymes and before I could read them for myself I had come to love the words of them. The words alone. What the words stood for was of a very secondary importance… I fell in love, that is the only expression I can think of, at once, and am still at the mercy of words, though sometimes now, knowing a little of their behaviour very well, I think I can influence them slightly and have even learned to beat them now and then, which they appear to enjoy. I tumbled for words at once. And, when I began to read the nursery rhymes for myself, and, later, to read other verses and ballads, I knew that I had discovered the most important things, to me, that could be ever.[17]

Thomas became an accomplished writer of prose poetry, with collections such as Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog (1940) and Quite Early One Morning (1954) showing he was capable of writing moving short stories.[8] His first published prose work, After the Fair, appeared in The New English Weekly on 15 March 1934.[18] Jacob Korg believes that one can classify Thomas's fiction work into two main bodies: vigorous fantasies in a poetic style and, after 1939, more straightforward narratives.[19] Korg surmises that Thomas approached his prose writing as an alternate poetic form, which allowed him to produce complex, involuted narratives that do not allow the reader to rest.[19]

Welsh poet

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Thomas disliked being regarded as a provincial poet and decried any notion of 'Welshness' in his poetry.[9] When he wrote to Stephen Spender in 1952, thanking him for a review of his Collected Poems, he added "Oh, & I forgot. I'm not influenced by Welsh bardic poetry. I can't read Welsh."[9] Despite this his work was rooted in the geography of Wales. Thomas acknowledged that he returned to Wales when he had difficulty writing, and John Ackerman argues that "His inspiration and imagination were rooted in his Welsh background".[20][21] Caitlin Thomas wrote that he worked "in a fanatically narrow groove, although there was nothing narrow about the depth and understanding of his feelings. The groove of direct hereditary descent in the land of his birth, which he never in thought, and hardly in body, moved out of."[22]

Head of Programmes Wales at the BBC, Aneirin Talfan Davies, who commissioned several of Thomas's early radio talks, believed that the poet's "whole attitude is that of the medieval bards." Kenneth O. Morgan counter-argues that it is a 'difficult enterprise' to find traces of cynghanedd (consonant harmony) or cerdd dafod (tongue-craft) in Thomas's poetry.[23] Instead he believes his work, especially his earlier more autobiographical poems, are rooted in a changing country which echoes the Welshness of the past and the Anglicisation of the new industrial nation: "rural and urban, chapel-going and profane, Welsh and English, Unforgiving and deeply compassionate."[23] Fellow poet and critic Glyn Jones believed that any traces of cynghanedd in Thomas's work were accidental, although he felt Thomas consciously employed one element of Welsh metrics; that of counting syllables per line instead of feet.[nb 4] Constantine Fitzgibbon, who was his first in-depth biographer, wrote "No major English poet has ever been as Welsh as Dylan".[24]

Although Thomas had a deep connection with Wales, he disliked Welsh nationalism. He once wrote, "Land of my fathers, and my fathers can keep it".[25][26] While often attributed to Thomas himself, this line actually comes from the character Owen Morgan-Vaughan, in the screenplay Thomas wrote for the 1948 British melodrama The Three Weird Sisters. Robert Pocock, a friend from the BBC, recalled "I only once heard Dylan express an opinion on Welsh Nationalism. He used three words. Two of them were Welsh Nationalism."[25] Although not expressed as strongly, Glyn Jones believed that he and Thomas's friendship cooled in the later years as he had not 'rejected enough' of the elements that Thomas disliked – "Welsh nationalism and a sort of hill farm morality".[27] Apologetically, in a letter to Keidrych Rhys, editor of the literary magazine Wales, Thomas's father wrote that he was "afraid Dylan isn't much of a Welshman".[25] Though FitzGibbon asserts that Thomas's negativity towards Welsh nationalism was fostered by his father's hostility towards the Welsh language.[28]

  1. ^ "Dylan Thomas: 1914–1953". Poetry Foundation. Retrieved 15 August 2020. The originality of his work makes categorization difficult. In his life he avoided becoming involved with literary groups or movements […].
  2. ^ "Dylan Thomas: 1914–1953". Poetry Foundation. Retrieved 15 August 2020. Thomas can be seen as an extension into the 20th century of the general movement called Romanticism, particularly in its emphasis on imagination, emotion, intuition, spontaneity, and organic form.
  3. ^ Olson (1954), p. 2.
  4. ^ Olson (1954), p. 2: "The age was fond of explicating obscure poetry; the poetry of Thomas was so obscure that no one could explicate it."
  5. ^ Abrams, M. H.; Greenblatt, Stephen (eds.). The Norton Anthology of English Literature. New York: W.W. Norton. pp. 2705–2706.
  6. ^ Cite error: The named reference Poetry Foundation was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  7. ^ Bold (1976), p. 76.
  8. ^ a b c Cite error: The named reference WAEoW was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  9. ^ a b c d Ferris (1989), p. 115.
  10. ^ a b Ferris (1989), pp. 259–260.
  11. ^ Tindall (1996), p. 14.
  12. ^ Kunitz, Daniel (September 1996). "Review of Dylan Thomas: His Life & Work by John Ackerman". Retrieved 20 July 2012.
  13. ^ Ferris (1989), p. 186.
  14. ^ Cite error: The named reference UMW Chron was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  15. ^ Mayer, Ann Elizabeth (1995). Artists in Dylan Thomas's Prose Works: Adam Naming and Aesop Fabling. McGill-Queens. p. 31. ISBN 978-0-7735-1306-8. Retrieved 26 July 2012.
  16. ^ "Creating the Thomas myth". BBC. Retrieved 31 July 2012.
  17. ^ Myers, Jack; Wukasch, Don (2003). Dictionary of Poetic Terms. University of North Texas Press. ISBN 978-1-57441-166-9.
  18. ^ Taylor, Paul Beekman (2001). Gurdjieff and Orage: Brothers in Elysium. Weiser Books. p. 193. ISBN 978-1-57863-128-5.
  19. ^ a b Korg (1965), pp. 154–82.
  20. ^ Watkins, Helen; Herbert, David (2003). "Cultural policy and place promotion: Swansea and Dylan Thomas". Geoforum. 34 (2003): 254. doi:10.1016/S0016-7185(02)00078-7.
  21. ^ Ackerman, John (1973). Welsh Dylan: An Exhibition to Mark the Twentieth Anniversary of the Poet's Death. Cardiff: Welsh Arts Council. p. 27.
  22. ^ Ferris (1989), p. 176.
  23. ^ a b Morgan, Kenneth O. (2002). A Rebirth of a Nation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 263–265. ISBN 978-0-19-821760-2.
  24. ^ FitzGibbon (1965), p. 19.
  25. ^ a b c FitzGibbon (1965), p. 10.
  26. ^ Wroe, Nick (25 October 2003). "To begin at the beginning…". guardian.co.uk. Retrieved 27 July 2012.
  27. ^ Jones (1968), p. 198.
  28. ^ FitzGibbon, Constantine (3 February 1966). "Dylan Thomas, in response". The New York Review. Retrieved 28 July 2012.


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