Customer Reviews

Poems of Edward Thomas

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It is incredible that it took a tiny press to bring one of the century's great poets back into print. But Handsel has done a wonderful job, and I will gladly pay a few extra dollars to have such a lovely volume. Everything from Peter Sacks's introduction to the quality of the paper shows the marks of care, and such details are part of the pleasure of reading a book. I wish they had included Walter de la Mare's introduction from the 1st edition, but those who are interested can seek it out; it is one of the most beautiful tributes I have ever read from one artist to another.

Thomas did not write a great deal of poetry, and he seems less read today than the other poets of his generation - Owen, for example - who wrote fiercer verse grounded in the events of their time. It is true that Thomas's subjects appear small: they are often pastoral scenes in landscapes that are difficult to find in the modern world, at least for most of us, but he also touches deep anxieties and taps elemental springs of beauty; the pastoral instinct will always exist, I think, even if all of the pastures disappear.

I find myself returning more often to these poems than others that are considered more important. Like Hardy, Thomas shows that it is enough to know a little part of the world very deeply to reach a great number of people, and it does not matter that his world has largely vanished. He makes it real enough, and its existence is as harsh a criticism of modern life as the work of more polemical poets. I like the quote from C.H. Sisson on the back of the book: "[Thomas] belonged to the underside of the world, from which renewal must come."

Here is an example, one of the many quiet masterpieces in this book. It is a poem that does something very small, but does it perfectly.

Sowing

It was a perfect day
For sowing; just
As sweet and dry was the ground
As tobacco-dust.

I tasted deep the hour
Between the far
Owl's chuckling first soft cry
And the first star.

A long stretched hour it was;
Nothing undone
Remained; the early seeds
All safely sown.

And how, hark at the rain,
Windless and light,
Half a kiss, half a tear,
Saying good-night.

Edward Thomas was killed in World War One but he is not, primarily, a war poet. Instead he is the observer and the cherisher of the values of the British countryside. He's not sentimental, and he never attempts to sugar coat anything - some of his poems describing rural life and personal struggles are as deep and harrowing as anything ever written.

If we have to compare him with anyone it would be Robert Frost, who knew him, admired his work, walked the English farmlands with him, and whose outlook was very similar in so many ways. Frost lived on to garner fame and fortune. Thomas was killed in France. In many ways Thomas is the greater poet, to my mind, since he sees the transcendent and the eternal where Frost can, at times, be wry and slightly despondent about being alive. Read 'Addlestrop' -- about a moment when a railway train stops, briefly, at a rural station and no one gets on or off, and you'll see what I mean. The last line will make your heart swell.

Grab a copy of Thomas's works while you can. They are utterly exquisite and have not been widely reprinted.

Allan Hunter
[...]
author of 'Write Your Memoir' and seven other books, all to be found here on Amazon.