Customer Reviews

The Poems of Dylan Thomas, New Revised Edition [with CD]

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Certainly, if you like poetry at all. Open the book at random and start listening to the sound as you read. OK---in my case, it's fallen open at this:
Shall gods be said to thump the clouds
When clouds are cursed by thunder,
Be said to weep when weather howls?
Shall rainbows be their tunics' colour?
So on one level, this is poetry for mouthing and savouring and enjoying like music. Technically, it's tight as a drum. See how the vowels are juxtaposed and notice the assonance and shape-rhymes at the end of the lines. Then comes the meaning. Dylan Thomas is not the simplest poet to understand, but he always has a strong, strident, moving argument to make that you can't forget, even if you don't agree. This edition includes recordings of the poet reading some of the verses in his strangely old-fashioned, but unforgettable voice. I first met Dylan Thomas's poems when I was 14, at a stormy, angry, poetry-writing age. That's a good moment to encounter a great poet and find out what else can be said and considered and felt. If it's Dylan Thomas, there's a strong chance he'll stay with you for the rest of your life. This is a book to leave around casually for others to find, especially if they're at a stormy, angry, poetry-writing age. If only more of us were, more of the time.

Years ago i read "do not go gentle into that good night" and i was introduced to dylan thomas. i quickly went out and bought his collected poems, and was totally enraptured by the poet. he has stayed on the top of my favorites, even as i read more and more poetry. this collection is not a complete works. it contains what Daniel Jones (a friend of DT's) selected out of thomas' works. the collected poems and about 100 other poems, one additional incomplete poem, and 26 poems from DT's juvenalia. it's a good collection, but you can see why dylan thomas did not include these extra poems in his collected poems. they aren't as great as what he can produce. if you love dylan thomas, like i do, then this is a great book to buy, otherwise, you can just stick with the collected poems (those poems were selected by DT himself, as the work he wanted to "save").

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.

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.

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

Edited and with an Introduction and Notes by Daniel Jones, The Poems Of Dylan Thomas is the most complete edition of the heartfelt works of this noted and influential twentieth-century poet. 192 poems, incorporating some textual corrections, a brief chronology of Thomas' life (1914-1953), a new preface, and the inclusion of Dylan Thomas' "Notes on the Art of Poetry" comprise this literate, majestic, and absorbing 352-page collection. Request To Leda (Homage to William Empson): Not your winged lust but his must now change suit/The harp-waked Casanova rakes no range./The worm is (pin-point) rational in the fruit. // Not girl for bird (gourd being man) breaks root./Taking no plume for index in love's change/Not your winged lust but his must now change suit. // Desire is phosphorus: the chemic bruit/Lust bears like volts, who'll amplify, and strange/The worm is (pin-point) not rational in the fruit.

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.

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.

Dylan Thomas was a weirdo and i think that this book illistrates that in a wonderful manner. he was awesome