Book Magazine, Stephen Whited, 1 August 2003
Might win over a younger generation, who will surely recognize [Thomas] as one of their own.
Book Description
A classic New Directions bookrevised for the 21st Century. Dylan Thomas (1914-1953) prepared this volume in 1952the author's choice of the ninety poems he felt would best represent his work up to that timeand 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 Jonesboth 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."
Selected Poems, 1934 to 1952 FROM THE PUBLISHER
A classic New Directions bookrevised for the 21st Century.Dylan Thomas (1914-1953) prepared this volume in 1952the author's choice of the ninety poems he felt would best represent his work up to that timeand 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 Jonesboth 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."
Author Biography: The reputation of Dylan Thomas (1914-1953) as one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century has not waned in the fifty years since his death. A Welshman with a passion for the English language, Thomas's poetic voice is distinguished by compact, striking metaphors and a startling array of radiant, surreal and witty images, much of it Christian, Freudian or sprung directly from the wild landscapes of Wales. Thomas celebrated the intricate relationships between procreation, birth, death and love, and wrote, as Thomas himself said, "for the love of Man and in praise of God."