Selected Poems 1934-1952, New Revised Edition [Paperback]

Dylan Thomas (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 2003

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."

Editorial Reviews

Review

Might win over a younger generation, who will surely recognize [Thomas] as one of their own.
(Stephen Whited - Book Magazine )

About the Author

The reputation of Welsh poet Dylan Thomas (1914-1953) as one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century has not waned in the fifty years since his death. His work, noted for its lush metaphors, musicality, and playfulness within traditional forms, was largely responsible for modernizing poetic verse. Thomas also wrote captivating short stories, a novella, several screenplays and radio plays, as well as his delightful stage play, Under Milk Wood—all infused with his passion for the English language and his enduring love of Wales.

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: New Directions; Revised edition (April 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811215423
• ISBN-13: 978-0811215428
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #700,971 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dylan's greatness as a poet A power of feeling and music all his own, December 15, 2005

By 

Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Selected Poems 1934-1952, New Revised Edition (Paperback)

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 stuns us startles and surprises us with lines of incredible beauty.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Words Well Written, December 25, 2005

By 

Daniel Shevock (Pittsburgh, PA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Selected Poems 1934-1952, New Revised Edition (Paperback)

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.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The fire of birds in the world's turning wood, December 12, 2008

By 

dylanissimus "dylanissimus" (Massachusetts) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Selected Poems 1934-1952, New Revised Edition (Paperback)

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.