Product Description
The original and classic Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas is available once again, now with a brilliant new preface by Paul Muldoon.

The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas contains poems that Thomas personally decided best represented his work.The year of its publication, Thomas died from swelling of the brain triggered by excessive drinking. (A piece of New Directions history: it was our founder James Laughlin who identified Thomas' body at the morgue of St. Vincent's Hospital.)

Since its initial publication in 1953, this book has become the definitive edition of the poet's work. Thomas wrote "Prologue" addressed to "my readers, the strangers" — an introduction in verse that was the last poem he would ever write. Also included are classics such as "And Death Shall Have No Dominion," "Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night," and "Fern Hill" that have influenced generations of artists from Bob Dylan (who changed his last name from Zimmerman in honor of the poet), to John Lennon (The Beatles included Thomas' portrait on the cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band) ; this collection even appears in the film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's The Road when it is retrieved from the rubble of a bookshelf. ... Read more

Product 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 (10)

unfortunate
Great book in said condition, except for the fact that someone got to it first to rip a page of his most famous poem out of the back.Transaction and delivery were prompt.

great
The condition was better than advetised.My father was delighted that the cd was there.Thanks for the good work.

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. ... Read more

Product 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 (14)

Wow...lotsa CDs!
When you open the box pictured, you get three folders of CDs 1-4, 5-8, and 9-11 respectively. The pictures on the CD folders are the "album covers" reproduced from the records. There is a little pamphlet with info about recording Dylan Thomas written by Marianne Roney, one of the founders of Caedmon. Each CD opens with a spoken intro by Billy Collins.

There is a great mish-mash of selections here. That might be my only criticism, the organization. It's hard to discern the order just from looking at it...why not put an entire album on the same CD, rather than breaking it up? For example, they put some poems from "Dylan Thomas Reading Over Sir John's Hill and Other Poems" on CD 1 and others on CD 2, and I'm curious why.

Still, the collection is great--I'm not sure if it is supposed to be complete or not (I don't see anything on it that claims that), but there is a good plenty here to keep a person listening for a long while at any rate. His voice is wonderful and it's easy to understand why they recorded so much of him.

When i was a Windy Boy. . .
What an absolute delight.

Forget learning tongue twisters for superior elocution; learn and read Thomas' poetry the way he himself does.

A large array of recordings all in neat little covers, which are minatures of the original LP covers. Extra little treats such as Edith Sitwell speaking from her superior mountain-top make this an unmissable event!

Do not go gently. . .

Adds a lot to the poems
my favorites are fern hill, do not go, death by fire, craft and sullen art, no dominion.Also child's christmas.Do not expect to like or even tolerate every entry.But the ones that you do like, there is nothing else in the world like Dylan Thomas reading aloud.

I also found somewhere him reading To My Son Aged Eight by John Betjeman, which is a great, heartbreaking poem, read wonderfully, and an interesting counterpoint to do not go.

These have been on my ipods for years and I still love to hear them.

I also like the Voice of the Poet series with T.S. Eliot reading his poems aloud.Wish I could find someone reading aloud Tennyson and Matthew Arnold.

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. ... 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

Customer Reviews (1)

Holds up to the test of time
When I was a girl I discovered Dylan Thomas, was enraptured by his words, the music he composed with them, his rich voice, his disorderly personal history, and I made pilgrimages--to Wales, to the White Horse Tavern, to long walks over leaves changing color during the Scorpio days we shared.My treasured volume disappeared, however, over the years.Maybe one of my children was equally entranced and made off with it.It was only Amazon's remarkable network of booksellers that produced this copy, and I'm happy to report that the beloved words have withstood the test of time.Dylan Thomas was, and remains, one of the 20th century's giants, who enriched his native language and left us with an exquisite imagery. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Poems of nostalgia and Wales
This book is a compilation of Thomas' sessions at the BBC. There are poems in prose and in verse. His style transmits nostalgia for his native Wales. Some of the best parts are his sketches of other Welch poets. A highly recommendable book by one very good poet, the same one who died in New York at the Chelsea hotel, after having more than 40 scotchs with soda. His poetry is rhythmical and clear, very imaginative and precise. ... Read more

Product Description

First recorded in February of 1952, this remastered recording of Dylan Thomas reading his A Child's Christmas in Wales recalls all of the sights, smells, and sounds of a long-ago-Christmas.

Thomas's wonderful recollection of this holiday in the seaside town of his youth is captured in this vivid performance. Also included are five other selected poems read by Dylan Thomas, including his well-known Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.

Customer Reviews (14)

wonderful
this is a wonderful story, i have the video, am now ordering the dvd, it is just a great and warm story that all families will enjoy, year after year, it will become a family classic

A Child's Christmas in Wales CD: and Five Poems
If you are familiar with the Poem, "A Child's Christmas in Wales", but have never heard it read by the author, Dylan Thomas, you must get this CD.His voice and inflection will transport you to a time long ago in Wales.Close your eyes and listen.

Listening to history.
It is a unique experience listening to Thomas' voice, but a little difficult to listen to.I don't think Thomas would be hired today to read aloud on a CD.It really sounds as if this was made in a different era.

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.

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. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

"I , in my intricate image..."
It started with his poetry when I was in high school.Imediately, I was spellbound.Then I found this collection of short stories.I cannot stop reading.I love every aspect of his "craft or sullen art."When I read his works, I feel a kind of longing and comfort.The stories in this collection were taken from books that were already published, and after reading these stories, I want to read everything Dylan Thomas ever wrote.When I see his picture, I sense a bond between him and I.I see the little boy, I see the young man; I know them.Dylan Thomas' type of writing is something all writers want to achieve.His words are completely private and honest.He is an imortal legacy. ... Read more

Product Description
Dylan Thomas was a sensation, both as a person and as a poet.His writing – short stories as well as verse – was hugely popular. He broadcast widely on the old BBC Home and Third Programmes. Given to drink and womanising, his life was public and even in the more staid 1940s caused a continuing stir.In 1953, after completing the work for which he is best remembered, UNDER MILK WOOD, he left London for his first US reading tour, where he had been ‘discovered’ him the previous year.But he was still drinking heavily and in November 1953 he died suddenly in New York. He was only 39.

There have been two previous lives of Thomas: by Constantine Fitzgibbon (1965) and Paul Ferris (1977 and revised for Dent in 1999).But since then Thomas wife, Caitlin, and his son Llewelyn, have died. Their surviving families have promised Lycett access to their papers. Lycett has also secured the backing of the Dylan Thomas trustees and of Thomas’s daughter Aeronwy.

The 50th anniversary is an ideal moment to reassess Dylan Thomas’s his genius as a writer and his short but tragic life. This biography will provide a focus for a programme of Dylan Thomas resissues (Orion control his books) and Dylan Thomas celebrations. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

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 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

Product Description
In print for fifty years, this gem of lyric prose has enchanted both young and old from its very first edition.

Dylan Thomas, 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. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (17)

Great Service
The book was in excellent condition.It was obviously very carefully packaged to prevent damage during shipping and arrived in a timely fashion.I would definitely buy from AJK again.Of course this book is a classic, with darling pictures.

A Classic
This is my book groups' Dec. selection.We will read it and discuss it.
It is a wonderful Christmas story.

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.

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.

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

Customer Reviews (5)

Too Quaint and Wordy...
I could not get into Dylan's quaint, cumbersome ways of writing. The poetic idol of the 50's tavern and pub culture falls in the classic Welsh trap - loving the sound of his own words too much and completely forgetting where or why his 'tale' is headed.
I liked best the deceptively ironic title.

passivity?
A wonderful piece of writing.Samual Bennett, the main character, is a young man who attempts to let his life's course be dictated only by external influences.His move to London is preceded by the destruction of his parent's precious mementoes, thereby ensuring that he can never return home.The book, cut short by the death of Thomas, follows the youth on his adventure in passivity with sparkling prose and incredible characters.Unfortunately we can only speculate on the final outcome.

altered landscapes...
wow... not what i expected.

while the plot itself does not have time to become remarkable, the characters are animated enough to compensate. the whole thing seemed to be a cartoonish farce; i could not help thinking ofold beatles movies and episodes of scooby doo (?)

this appears to havebeen written from an altered perspective (or was intended to convey one) ascharacters shift in and out of the story's focus in a stalled, haphazardway such that each one is grooving to his own inner music. theindividuality and breadth of creativity displayed here by thomas and hisunique assembly of characters is amazing considering the book's platry 60pages.

highly recommeded.

leaving your hometown as an inner adventure
A fine beginning: The main character of this never completed novel, due to the early death of Dylan Thomas, is Samuel Bennet. He grows up in a small town and feels very bored in this area. So, when he's twenty, he decides to go to London, where he expects to find life more interesting. This is how the story starts and the reader is probably curious to learn more of all the detailed adventures a young man can get into. But what Thomas describes is not only what Samuel encounters, he also gives a unique example of what a person may feel and think like in such a situation. With this topic, Thomas has to stand a comparism with authors like Joyce (A portrait of an artist as young man) or Wilde (The picture of Dorian Gray)and he does it quite well. To lead the reader into Samuel's world he clinks out from reality and tells some passages in a very surrealistic way. Not only this is a proof of quality, but Thomas builds up a unity to the outer world with some accurate themes wh! ich he positions with an twinkle in the eye in the story. If one thinks of the importance of the topics he develops during the story, there is hard to find a comparable piece in world literature, which is written in such a structured an allthough amusing way. The major topics are for example: Leaving home and going to the big town, getting rid of your childhood's place and planning your own future; to position oneself in the social classes; and how to manage with problems of your own childhood and where it may end when you just escape from them. In the whole I would say this is a book which has never got the reputation it may deserves, but the author has probably had too much success with other pieces within his lifetime, that this book has been a little out of the spotlight.

Dyaln Thomas at his best
Dyaln Thomas writes this amusing tale of a young man who destroys his parent's house and then runs away to London.He meets some interesting characters and has a crazy adventure while he's there.However, Thomas never completed it, but we're lucky we have the little bit that he wrote ... Read more

Product Description
And Death Shall Have No Dominion, A Winter's Tale, On Reading Poetry Aloud and other selections.Amazon.com Review
Listeners will cherish the opportunity to hear Dylan Thomassoar and swoop through the glorious language of powerful poetry. Thelyrical, almost musical quality of his writing was intended to be readaloud; here, from original recordings made in 1949, '50, and '52,Thomas is most effective, reading many of his own poems and classicworks by masters such as Thomas Hardy, W.H. Auden, andW.B. Yeats. Unfortunately, even with the wonders of modern digitalremastering, there are several instances where poor audio qualitymakes for difficult listening. However, if the choice is to hear DylanThomas through hissing and popping or not to hear him at all, theformer is far more desirable. (Running time: 1.5 hours, 2cassettes) --George Laney ... 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
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 (5)

Brilliant Poet
Dylan Thomas will interest anyone with even a basic appreciation of poetry. Some dark and some inspirational- give it a chance! You won't be dissappointed.

The fire of birds in the world's turning wood
This reader has had the first 52 lines of Dylan Thomas's "Author's Prologue" memorized since the age of sixteen, and has a semi-firm grasp of the remaining 50 lines of the poem. In the absence of unforgettably solemn liturgies or a culture immersed in scriptural cadences, Thomas's poems fulfilled for this reader the same function than the Authorized Version of the Holy Bible fulfilled for many previous generations of English-speaking poets: making us fall in love with the sound of the word. Thomas is not always clear and comely, rarely dulcet and decorous, raucous oftener than reverent (he sometimes manages to be both!), but he is never hackneyed and almost impossible to forget.

Some of the effects in "Poem On His Birthday" and "Over Sir John's Hill" are as lovely and intricate as anything by Gerard Manley Hopkins, e g: "this sandgrain day in the bent bay's grave" or "flash, and the plumes crack, and a black cap of jackdaws Sir John's just hill dons." In the earliest eighteen poems, we have a kind of 20th-century retelling or paraphrase of the Book of Genesis (there is a poem called "In the Beginning"), with William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience and perhaps Auden, Lawrence, and Freud as tributary influences.

The later lyrics of nostalgia, "Fern Hill" and "Poem in October," exert an undeniable charm, and the wartime elegies ("A Refusal to Mourn the Death by Fire of a Child in London" most notably) have a furious splendour. The villanelle, "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night," is immortal.

The flaws in Dylan Thomas's aesthetic are somewhat obvious -- making the sound of the language into a kind of religion is not the most prudent course. And the failures, when they occur ("Once Below a Time") are crashingly abysmal. But we retain our familial loyalty to Dylan Thomas, who sang to the best of his love as the flood began, the moonshine-drinking Noah of the bay who sings still in these ineffaceable poems, around the globe from Laugharne to Lesotho, from Swansea to Sandusky -- wherever his books are found, opened, and cherished.

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

Product Description
This gathering of all Dylan Thomas's stories, ranging chronologically from the dark, almost surrealistic tales of Thomas's youth to such gloriously rumbustious celebrations of life as A Child's Christmas in Wales and Adventures in the Skin Trade, charts the progress of "The Rimbaud of Cwmdonkin Drive" toward his mastery of the comic idiom.

Here, too, are stories originally written for radio and television and, in a short appendix, the schoolboy pieces first published in the Swansea Grammar School Magazine. A highpoint of the collection is Thomas's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog, a vivid collage of memories from his Swansea childhood that combines the lyricism of his poetry with the sparkle and sly humor of Under Milk Wood. Also here is the fiction from Quite Early One Morning, a collection planned by Thomas shortly before his death.

Altogether there are more than forty stories, providing a rich and varied literary feast and showing Dylan Thomas in all his intriguing variety-somber fantasist, joyous word-spinner, comedian of smalltown Wales. The book includes an entertaining, informative reflection on Thomas by another Welsh poet and storyteller, Leslie Norris, as well as a brief listing of publication details by Professor Walford Davies, editor of Dylan Thomas: Early Prose Works.

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

Amazon.com Review
Dylan Thomas's poems gambol and frisk across the tongue andimagination 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 firsttwo 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 wished preserved 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

Product Description
The definitive edition of Dylan Thomas's five published volumes of poems: 18 POEMS, TWENTY-FIVE POEMS, THE MAP OF LOVE, DEATHS AND ENTRANCES and IN COUNTRY SLEEP. Dylan Thomas wrote passionately about life in all its moods and moments: from the first thrilling moments of childbirth to the darker moments of death and loss. COLLECTED POEMS is introduced by the poet himself with a passionate seashore 'Prologue', in which the self-styled Noah of poetry builds his ark against ruin. This edition includes his last, unfinished poem 'Elegy', and the opening of 'In Country Heaven' - an ambitious project conceived after the dropping of the atom bomb. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Annotated edition of the collective poems
This is an annotated edition of the collective poems which provides much helpful background information on the composition of the poems. It does not however provide any kind of systematic interpretation of the poems. The notes are placed at the back of the book so as not to interfere with the reading of the poems.
Of the collected poems themselves I think that there are few readers and listeners of poetry in English who would quarrel with the assessment that Thomas was one of the great poets of the twentieth century , and arguably its greatest reader of poetry. His greatness as a poet has much to do with the sheer music and lyrical depth of his poetry , a soundrich beauty which often could be overwhelming. His great inventiveness linguistically and his strong sense of how to build a poem dramatically make his poetry riveting and mysterious at once. Along with Hopkins and Wallace Stevens his work seems to me the most hear-able of all English poetry in the past one hundred years.
I will give one small example of how the notes help us read the poems. The notes in discussing one of Thomas' greatest poems ' Do not go gentle into that good night' describe Thomas father as an atheist who when it rained raged and blasted and blamed God for it. He was a person of integrity and strength , clearly a man of powerful feeling. Thomas great and moving lines the last stanza (' And you, my father, there on the sad height./ Curse, bless , me now with your fierce tears. I pray. / Do not gentle into that good night./ Rage, rage against the dying of the light.) are better understood when we have this sense of how his father seem to inspire him to great poetry.

2 more poems
This "collected poems 1934-1953" has 2 poems that "collected poems 1934-1952" (which has all poems Dylan himself wished to be included at that time, 1952) doesn't have: "In Country Heaven" and "Elegy". Former was intended by him to be included in some future collection and latter, this is the last, but unfinished poem Dylan ever wrote. ... Read more

Product Description
This is one of Ardizzone's last books, and in our mind one of his best; a gentle and beguiling memoir of a Christmas spent in Cardiff when Thomas was a child. Ardizzone's quick, sure brushwork is not only the perfect complement to a timeless classic but a wonderful evocation of a gentle and seemingly endless Christmas in a faraway land made charming and endearing through language. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

More than a Christmas story.
Scaring sleeping uncles by popping balloons. Getting a hatchet by mistake. Snowballing cats. Dylan Thomas has captured the perfect Christmas. Without any moral, very little plot, and a concern only for the child's perspective, this little piece sticks in my mind better than any other Christmas story I've ever read. Between drunk Auntie Hannah singing in the backyard and the haunted house down the streets where a group of mischievous carollers get the living hellscared out of them, "A Child's Christmas in Wales" is everything Christmas should be: funny, happy, poignant, a little sad, and fattening. Keep a bowl of candy nearby when you read it. ... Read more

Product Description
Completed just before his death in 1953, this work gives the fullest expression to Thomas' sense of the magnificent flavor and variety of life. A moving and hilarious account of a spring day in a small Welsh coastal town, Under Milk Wood is "lyrical, impassioned and funny, an Our Town given universality" (The New Statesman and Nation). (Poetry/Plays) ... Read more

Customer Reviews (16)

A great radio play that's poetic, innovative and amusing
This Dylan Thomas fellow could certainly turn a phrase.His "Under Milkwood" is a radio play that shows a day in the life of the residents of the fictional Welsh town of Llareggub (which is "bugger all" spelled backwards).While the story is of the slice-of-life variety, it is nevertheless enjoyable with its various relationship threads.For example, Mr. Pugh is constantly trying to poison his wife while she nitpicks him to death about his manners and Thomas visits upon them several times throughout the play.Thomas obviously loves wordplay and language, as evidenced by his vivid yet offbeat descriptions and the interesting names he selects for some of his characters (e.g. Mary Ann the Sailors, Captain Cat).It's like reading Shakespeare without getting bogged down in Elizabethan iambic pentameter.

I was so impressed with this that I'll probably break down and get the original radio play as performed by Richard Burton.Under Milkwood (BBC Radio Collection)

A tiny dingle is Milk Wood . . .
I've never read any of Dylan Thomas's poetry, but when I found a copy of Under Milk Wood for a quarter, I figured it'd be a perfect opportunity to get better versed in both drama and Thomas. I've always heard that he is one of the most depressing poets ever, so I said, "Hey, I love Sylvia Plath and Pablo Neruda. I love Morrissey. I will love this."

But I didn't love it. In fact, I was fairly unimpressed. I waited 95 pages for it to start, and then it ended. There wasn't even an abundance of sadness! I can handle a complete lack of movement within a story as long as it is depressing (I'm a Jim Jarmusch fan, too). This wasn't, though. It was even sort of funny. Not that I have a problem with that, but it was only sort of funny. A few chuckles here and there, but not enough to consider this a comedy.

In fact, I don't know what the hell it is. A Play For Voices? Sure, I guess. Maybe that's the problem: I didn't hear it. I know I can't judge a screenplay (or a play for voices. Whatever) by the way it appears on the page. Maybe this holds up upon performance.

But maybe it doesn't. I only read it, and therefore I have to focus on the piece as a work on the page. It succeeds in being a very detailed character study and it even sets up enough loose ends and possible connections for a novel. However, the play takes place over the course of one day, and it comes off as being just a day. Just another day. When it ended - the day and the play - I was anticipating what would happen next.

Maybe that's where the sadness comes in. These characters are dealing with ghosts in their dreams and their own limitations (the unrefinement of Nogood Boyo, the heartbreak of Polly Garter, the stationary reverie of Captain Cat) on a daily basis. That said, I still need something to happen. I've always championed the idea that life doesn't happen in the grand sweep, it usually happens in the long lulls. I'd have to try pretty hard to defend this play, though. Sure, the language is fantastic and Dylan uses his poetic creativity to paint a pretty picture, but at the end, I said "Hmm. Cool. Who gives a f***?"

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. ... Read more

Product Description
“a moving memoir, beautifully drawn.”—The Sunday TimesWhen Aeronwy was six, her parents Dylan and Caitlin Thomasmoved to the boathouse at the edge of the small Welshvillage Laugharne. Through a child’s eye, she recalls the chaos andjoy of living with Dylan Thomas while the poet was at the heightof his creative powers, composing Under Milk Wood. Through aseries of beautifully evocative episodes, village and family life areexplored. Emerging from the narrative, Aeronwy tells a movingmemoir of growing up in Wales in the 1940s and a new portrait ofDylan Thomas as a father from the only person who could tell thatstory. This literary sensation includes never-before-seen photos ofDylan Thomas and his family, will get widespread attention, andfeatures personalities like Augustus John, A.J.P. Taylor, as well asthe villagers who would eventually be transformed into the charactersfrom Llareggub. 25 black-and-white illustrations ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Poignant Childhood Memories by the Daughter of Dylan Thomas
This memoir by the daughter of Dylan Thomas is written in a simple and straightforward style, telling of the many years that his family spent living in the Boat House in Langharne, thanks to Dylan's patron, Margaret Taylor. As Aeronwy shares in her acknowledgements at the end of the book, the memoir took her ten years to write. As with all writing that appears to be fluid, flowing and effortless, much time has been spent on making this a seamless and unstrained work.

The text is amply supplied with photographs of the family, friends and surrounds, so that, along with the easy flow of the text, the reader is made to feel at home with all the characters inhabiting these pages. While Aeronwy mentions the names of many of her father's famous visitors, and briefly mentions who they are, the major characters are those of the local pub landlord, Crossmouse (no wonder Dylan's characters always sound so delightful...), their hearing and speech challenged neighbor, Booda ("a fixture in the kitchen"), and numerous childhood friends. After all, Aeronwy has no need to promote her father's work, or to persuade us that his connections were the leading literati of the day - we (should at least) know all that already.

Instead, the focus of the book is on the childhood adventures of Aeronwy and her two brothers, Llewellyn and Colm. The gentle, self-deprecatory sense of humor which Aeronwy displays throughout these pages is clearly shown in the way in which she refers to her slight twinges of sibling rivalry: "To my disgust, he smiled most of the time unless he had a dirty nappy or was hungry and everyone loved him. He was hard to resist, though I was trying hard."

Despite their home not always being a happy one, as Caitlin was much riled by Dylan's dalliance with an American mistress, Pearl Kazin, whom he acquired on one of his numerous tours of the States, there was always a solid and loving home base to which he was able to return. Although Aeronwy does not hide the way in which her father died, she also does not dwell on the negatives. Indeed, many a reader will long to have come from just such a home. Despite their financial poverty (few writers are given their due merit in this lifetime, as we all know), which led Dylan to write many an importuning letter, to which Aeronwy refers, their home was spiritually rich and vibrant, surrounded by books and the wealth of imaginings. The text provides valuable insights into how Dylan wrote, literally being locked away for five hours each day by Caitlin (according to Aeronwy "as her contribution to his literary output").Aeronwy describes how, as soon as her father "spoke every word out loud. For him, the sound of the words was integral to the poem. Sometimes his voice was loud and booming, at other times I had to put my ear to the thin door to hear his mumbles. It seemed like a secretive, incantatory rite."

My Father's Places is, above all, about Dylan's children and their childhood adventures, mainly spent at home and within the safe environs of Langharne village. For anyone who loves children, dogs (their constant companion is a half collie called Mably) and the sea, this book is a must. Even if you are not yet well acquainted with the poetic masterpieces of Dylan Thomas, after reading this heart-warming and refreshing memoir, you will most likely feel inclined to rush out and buy a copy - I urge you, do. [Reviewer for BookPleasures.com]

Bridget's Review

I love being able to look into another person's life.I was impressed with this book and the talent Aeronwy possesses.My Father's Places is an addicting memoir that is sure to stir up emotions in any reader. ... Read more