Customer Reviews

Under Milk Wood (Penguin Modern Classics)

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I am reviewing the text which I just read, not the radio broadcast which I heard once a few years ago. The text of course does not have the richness of voice, and intonation that the Radio Broadcast does. The reader is required to make a much greater effort at imagining and enjoying. Many of the comments and much of the dialogue which just sounds humorous when heard, does not necessarily come across that way on the page.

Reading it I compared it to other works written about the worlds of 'small - towns'. The first which came to mind is Thornton Wilder's Our Town'. But I also thought of Anderson 's 'Winesburg Ohio' and Joyce's 'Dubliners'.Also Edgar Lee Master's 'Spoon- River Anthology'.

Despite Captain Cat and the amorous Polly Garter and the good Reverend Jenkins it seems to me that Thomas does not have the same kind of richness in character - development that these other works do. It seems to me he is not really trying to have us focus in on the pathos and pain of any particular individual's story.

The Play is really a collective portrait. And the many characters and voices which come in and out are less memorable for their 'whole stories' than for their moments of perception, insight, wild imagination and fantasy, humor.

The whole text is alliterately rich and 'poetic'. It is filled with neologism, all kinds of words and things I did not, and do not know the meaning of. It has a certain mysterious quality. But I think what really carries it along is the poetic voice and humor of Thomas, his somewhat detached and distant word- picture of the quirks and foibles of a small town. But then too the language and the perceptions flash Beauty at us also. And there is a delight in the whole sense of making the story of the town into a play, which the poet is playing with as he tells it to us.

I must admit I did not find in any of the remarks or poems here the same power as there is Thomas' grestest poems. But there is the light and the play and the love of the small town and its people. A pleasure to read which I suspect is a much greater pleasure to listen to on the radio.