Dylan Thomas
Dylan Thomas
Dylan Marlais Thomaswas a Welsh poet and writer whose works include the poems "Do not go gentle into that good night" and "And death shall have no dominion"; the 'play for voices' Under Milk Wood; and stories and radio broadcasts such as A Child's Christmas in Wales and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog. He became widely popular in his lifetime and remained so after his premature death at the age of 39 in New York City. By...
NationalityWelsh
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth27 October 1914
CitySwansea, Wales
Reading one's own poems aloud is letting the cat out of the bag. You may have always suspected bits of a poem to be overweighted, overviolent, or daft, and then, suddenly, with the poet's tongue around them, your suspicion is made certain.
A worm tells summer better than the clock, The slug's a living calendar of days; What shall it tell me if a timeless insect Says the world wears away?
It is the measure of my individual struggle from darkness toward some measure of light.
All world was one, one windy nothing, My world was christened in a stream of milk.
I hold a beast, an angel, and a madman in me, and my enquiry is as to their working, and my problem is their subjugation and victory, down throw and upheaval, and my effort is their self-expression.
Somebody's boring me. I think it's me.
The photograph is married to the eye, Grafts on its bride one-sided skins of truth....
And on seesaw Sunday nights, I'd woo who ever I would with my wicked eye!
I do not need any friends. I prefer enemies. They are better company and their feelings towards you are always genuine.
I learnt the verbs of will, and had my secret; The code of night tapped on my tongue; What had been one was many sounding minded.
... Rebel against the flesh and bone, The word of the blood, the wily skin, And the maggot no man can slay.
Nothing grows in our garden, only washing. And babies.
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 before 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.
Don't be too harsh to these poems until they're typed. I always think typescript lends some sort of certainty: at least, if the things are bad then, they appear to be bad with conviction.