Nicholas
Reid reflects in essay form on general matters and ideas related to
literature, history, popular culture and the arts, or just life in general. You are free to agree
or disagree with him.
DYLAN THOMAS – AN INVITATION
What do I think
of Dylan Thomas?
No – I do not
think he was a truly great poet, up there with other 20th century
figures like Eliot or Yeats or Marianne Moore or even Auden. All of those other
luminaries had a maturity and a depth and a breadth of vision that Dylan never
attained. I do not think Thomas was a subtle poet. His themes of childhood and
the country soon run out on him and become forced. A big part of him remained
the little boy – or at least the adult who kept replaying what it was to be a
little boy and who saw the world in playful Toy Town terms (look no further
than Under Milk Wood). No wonder
adolescent males remain a core part of his audience. And I do believe Thomas,
with his rich and resonant and rolling voice performing his own work, was at
least partly responsible for the baleful modern habit of judging poetry as
performance only rather than as meaningful words.
But you know my
creed by now. If a poet, in a lifetime of work, produces even a handful of poems
that continue to be read and re-read and enjoyed and appreciated decades after
his death, then he is worthy of applause and appreciation. And Thomas produced
more than a handful of such poems. “Do not go gentle”, “The force that through
the green fuse”, “The hunchback in the park”, “Fern Hill”, “Over Sir John’s
Hill”, “A refusal to mourn”, “Poem in October”. You can probably add quite a
few more to this list. Thomas also worked very hard at sounds. He was a
craftsman. What a pleasure to swim in that sea of assonance and alliteration
and internal rhyme and sprung rhythms – especially in an age when poetry was
tending towards prosaic formlessness. You might sometimes weary of what he is
saying (“Rehashing his adolescence”, as his wife and brawling partner Caitlin
once said). But you can’t help enjoying the brio
with which he says it.
This month is
the 100th anniversary of Dylan Thomas’s birth – so he would now be
one hundred if the booze hadn’t got him in a New York bar, at the age of 39, in
1953.
I am more than
happy to introduce a presentation of his work by a company of great readers
including actors, poets, academics, librarians and general admirers of Dylan Thomas.
I look forward
to seeing you there if you are in Auckland on 23 October.
Thomas makes up for intellectual heft with sheer power - the musicality and originality of his poetry is like no other. Short-lived stars burn with greater intensity.
ReplyDeletePossibly - but this does submit to something of a romantic myth. Remember, Yeats was still writing really passionate stuff in his seventies.
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