Dylan Thomas Books

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.

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.

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.

I love this story, as do all my children, who, from their earliest years, have not much struggled with the density of the language nor the scatteredness of the story. 5 of my 8 great-grandparents are from Wales, and the remaining 3 have the blood in them as well, so maybe it is like drinking water for us.:-D Our minds are all scattered, and words, even English words ;-D, fall on us in clumps....which makes it doubly hard to keep a clean house. LOL

The sort of prose-poetry imaginative way of seeing and describing the world unique to Welshwomen and Welshmen and Welshchildren, which does not seek to keep up the pretense that history can be separated from myth, story and desire, and which requires loving with eyes wide open to [and eventually embracing] one's own and others' bumps, bruises and idiosyncracies included, is extraordinarily well represented here. So, by the way, is speaking and listening to the close and Holy darkness!

My favorite version isthe one illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman. To me she has captured the complexity of the Welsh personality best, though i have nothing to say against the other illustrators praised in these reviews. I DO have a warning for you: there are some skinny versions flying about which do not have the poem-story complete and correct. This sort of work cannot suffer removal or modification, IMHO.

gbg

If you have read A Child's Christmas in Wales, you know that it has to be a classic. But you can't fully appreciate it until you have heard Dylan Thomas read it. What a deep, expressive, poetic voice. For years, I have listened to the recording on a Caedman record. It is wonderful to have it on a CD.

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

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.

Dylan Thomas is immortal for the phrase "rage against the dying of the light", and probably should be. He had a real gift for the music in words. At first it seems that they should all be set to music, but as you hear them and let them play in your mind, you realize they are already their own setting. Some of his poems have been set to music, but none improved.

While I praise his real and powerful gifts, I also want to note that there is a certain adolescence in his themes of dying and death that, for me, diminish his greatness. However, it has and continues to attract the young who, in the abundance of everthing that is youth, think it mature and so, so, sophisticated to pine for death. For example in his own epitaph, he is upset with the fact that he has to die and blames his mother for bringing him into a world where his fate is to feed worms. Please! This from a man who basically drank himself to death at a sadly early age (not tragically - drinking yourself to death is hardly tragic, it is stupid).

For me, his early poem "Woman on Tapestry" is powerfully beautiful and demonstrates his gifts and strengths. Or take a look at the vitality and rhythm of "The Countryman's Return" (It opens: "Embracing Low-falutin' London (said the odd man in a country-pot, his hutch in the fields, by a mother-like henrun)". That's pretty good stuff.

The CD with Dylan Thomas' voice is a nice addition because the music is all the more obvious.

As a 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.

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 none has 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.

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.

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.

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 of old beatles movies and episodes of scooby doo (?)

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

highly recommeded.

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

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 born on 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's marathon 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 gentleman doth 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.

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.

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.

It is late. I am tired, but I have just finished a compelling book on a deeply compelling and tragic man. Dylan Thomas burned bright and fast, and this tale of drunken excess and amazing talent could have read like an exteneded episode of E! True Hollywood Story. It is the beauty of the words that raises Thomas's life up so high, the twisting of phrases, the power of poetry. This book made me want to throw my television off the balcony and embrace the world. Thomas was damaged goods, but at least he tried to live life to the full. He did more in less than 40 years than most writers do in a lifetime. A great biography.

Ralph McInerny's edition of St. Thomas Aquinas' thought is a good introduction for anyone who is interesting in one of the great Catholic and Christian thinkers. Mr. McInerny has good comments on Aquinas'life and intellectual foundations. These selections provide good coverage of Aquinas' views on several important issues such as the nature of God and the nature of Man.

Some of McInerny's selections of Aguinas' work includes selections from Aquinas' SUMMA THEOLOGICA and his SUMMA CONTRA GENTILES. These selections give the reader a good introduction before one tackles the entire corpus of these works.

Another useful feature of McInerny's edition are the selections of Aquinas' views on "ultimate values and questions." For example, Aquinas' view on Man as God's creation is representative of Aquinas' concern for the dignity men. This selection is a good antidote to the arguement of predestination. In fact, based on McInerny's selection, Aquinas thought more of men and gave men more dignity than any 19th or 20th pllitical leader ever has. The mass destruction of people during the 20th century may reminder that Aquinas ideas are important.

One question that Aquinas dealt with was the Nature of God. Aquinas handled this issue with precision and care. McInerny's inclusion of this section is good in that it shows Aquinas as a serious thinker who was not arrogant. In other words, Aquinas never claimed more than he could prove,and he was honest enough to admit this.

For those who are devout Catholics, McIreney included a sermon Aquinas delivered a thoughtful sermon on the Ava Maria and the status of the Virgin Mary. Aquinas justifies the Catholic belief and devotion to St. Mary based on his careful knowledge of the Bible. Aquinas informs the reader the saluation given to St. Mary is the most dignified in the Bible. For those who are not Catholic, this reviewer's comments to convince interested readers, but those who are not Catholic can learn why the status of St. Mary (Notre Dame or Our Lady) is so important to Catholicism.

McInerney has other selections of Free Will or choice, the nature of good vs. evil, the Sacraments, etc. McIrenery's use of these materials and Aquinas' work on these topics well defines Catholic beliefs and gives a rational bassis for them.

Bascially, McInerny edited a good introducion to Aquinas' thinking which is a welcome relief in "an age of cheap religion and thin philosophy." Readers would also do well to read Mr. Hunter's review which is very good. A good companion volume is G.K. Chesterton's book re St. Thomas Aquinas. Catholics and non-Catholics can benefit from McInerny's anthology to have a better understanding of Catholicism and Christianity. This book gives good reasons which may replace blind faith.

If you like Saint Thomas and you want to see Scholasticism at work in a great mind, read this book.

First of all, I am not Roman Catholic, but a memeber of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, so I have a bias--in the other direction!

However, my denominational difference does not diminish my burning admiration for this theological Godzilla. Gov. Jesse Ventura once commented that religion was for weak-minded people. I don't think "The Body" could last two rounds against "The Dumb Ox." In fact, I would prefer Aquinas over Socrates, Plato, and Aristoltle . . . combined!

This book is the best survey of this Catholic's corpulent corpus of comentary. Included are ample slices of the Summa Contra Gentile and Summa theologica, including selections from his essays on Law and Happiness. Another gem is a selection from Aquinas's comments on Boethius's "On The Trinity."

The selections cross the time and space of Aquinas's life, but morte importantly you get a cross-secton of his thought on everything.

I would reccomed this book to any good Catholic, or any curious non-Catholic. It is also useful for philosophy students, and honest truth-seekers everywhere.

ONLY ONE MISTAKE: Ralph McInerny left out "The Five Ways" of the proof of God's existence. This is like doing a boigraphy on George Lucas and not mentioning Star Wars! An unforgiveable sin! Hence, I took one star off my rating.

This is a compilation of works written by Aquinas. The book is edited by Ralph McInerny (Notre Dame) and contains all the important works of Aquinas. For instance, some of the works (or parts of works) included are: On Being and Essence, Theology, Faith, and Reason. On Boethius, The Meanings of Truth, On Creation, On Human Choice, On Law and Natural Law, The Virtues, The Logic of the Incarnation, Exposition of Paul's Epistle to Philemon, and much, much more. Moreover, McInerny includes a nice introduction that discusses Aquinas's life, works, and the impact of Thomism through the centuries. There is also a Chronology that includes important dates and events. This book is 841 pages of total Thomas. It is a great work to have if you are wanting to simply read some of the more important works by Aquinas or if you are wanting to dig a little deeper into the works of Aquinas. ... I highly recommend this book.

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.

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

"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.

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 all the more amazing when one considers how actually small the total of his output was. To listen to him read his poetry, though, is a profound experience. His reading of "Lament", one of his greatest poems (in my opinion), is riveting. The cadence of his rich voice, with his Welsh accent and sonorous vowels, reveling in the sheer sounds and the multifarious allusions in the meaning, is unforgettable. Now if they can remaster and issue it on CD---! But it's worth suffering the technical crudities of the recording to hear this great poet and equally great reciter.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Welsh poet Dylan Thomas made history in his poetry readings to an American audience in 1950: his style and presentation went beyond most academic presentations of poetry and entered the realm of the personal. This provides a biography of Thomas which is key to understanding his works and experiences in this country, and will make for excellent supplemental reading for those studying his writings.