Reluctantly Collected Poems
I only ask for a footnote. A bit of Dylan Thomas from the poem 'If I were tickled by the rub of love: And that's the rub, the only rub that tickles. The knobbly ape that swings along his sex From damp love-darkness and the nurse's twist Can never raise the midnight of a chuckle, Nor when he finds a beauty in the breast Of lover, mother, lovers, or his six Feet in the rubbing dust. And what's the rub? Death's feather on the nerve? Your mouth, my love, the thistle in the kiss?
My Jack of Christ born thorny on the tree? The words of death are dryer than his stiff, My wordy wounds are printed with your hair. I would be tickled by the rub that is: Man be my metaphor. She quickly dropped me, moved to Calgary and, last I heard, became a bartender. How Leonard Cohen is that? Dylan Thomas would have met her in the bar.
View all 13 comments. Reluctantly, but truthfully I must confess that I could not connect to these poems. I found the vocabulary plain, if not vulgar in many cases, and repetitive, the formulation and style deconstructed. In most cases, I understand the words but not the meaning of the sentence or even the complete poem.
Emotions called upon are dark, plaintiff, accusative, mortality, death. The author is celebrated as one of the great poets of this century. View all 4 comments.
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Oct 18, Cheryl Kennedy rated it really liked it Shelves: Light breaks where no sun shine; Where no sea runs, the waters of the heart Push in their tides; And, broken ghosts with glow-worms in their heads The things of light File through the flesh where no flesh decks the bone. Robert Lowell wrote "he is a dazzling obscure writer who can be enjoyed without understa Dylan Thomas was first recognized after the publication in of "Light Breaks Where No Sun Shines".
Robert Lowell wrote "he is a dazzling obscure writer who can be enjoyed without understanding". Generally, 20th century criticism ignored rather than studied his work because it failed to fit standard narratives. In my reading of his poems, I can understand the critics's view, but I agree with Robert Lowell. In his poem Elegy, Thomas wrote O deepest wound of all that he should die On that darkest day. Oh, he could hide The tears out of his eyes, too proud to cry. Until I die he will not leave my side. Dylan Thomas died in New York City in Sep 25, Erik Graff rated it it was amazing Recommends it for: Cannabis was so prevalent by the end of high school and beginning of college, my need to belong so great, that I was a regular user on weekends.
Eventually, however, having explored the action of the drug to the extent of taking enough hashish as to be unable to move, absorbed in drifting over brilliant kaleidoscopically checkered fields, I recognized that I wasn't learning anything new. Marihuana made me silly, made me hungry, made me sleepy, left me with a hangover the next day, a mild stupor.
None of this was very important or very interesting. I pretty much stopped taking the stuff. There were, however, exceptions. One, of course, was music. I could understand why my musician friends liked the stuff. The other was music's cousin, poetry. Thank heavens I was forced to read so much poetry in the public schools!
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I have some acquaintance with the major English and American poets because of it--some too with the Germans in translation. But, come college, there was no time for such indulgence. Time constraints being what they were, the poems that were assigned in some classes were read quickly, silently and with little enjoyment.
The music was lost, only the concepts were obtained, enough to get by in class. Weed, the great time-waster, provided a fortuitous exception to the rule, an exception that remains vivid to this day. It was a weekend in the winter of sophomore year. I had gotten stoned, gotten introspective and had wandered off to a lounge on north campus, leaving my partying friends.
Reluctantly Collected Poems - Kindle edition by Douglas Simmons. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Use features like. Shame Is an Ocean I Swim Across: Poems by Mary Lambert. Shame Is an Ocean I Swim #3. The Reluctant Dreamer: A Poetry Collection · Jamie Winters.
Not being sleepy, not liking my typically self-critical thoughts, I had prudentially grabbed a book, Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas. Normally, under the influence, reading wasn't easy. Printed words played like eels in shifting, shallow waters. Reading was slow going, distractive, the mind going hither and yon much like the eels.
But I had never tried poetry before. To focus, and because his style so obviously demands vocalization, I read the poems aloud, sittling there alone on an ugly couch in an ugly lounge. They were beautiful, impressive. I read a poem, got the concept, the pattern, and read it again, better, with understanding, with proper emphasis.
I did my best with what I imagined to be a Welch accent, an imitation of his voice from "A Child's Christmas in Wales" which Father had listened to yearly. Certain of the critical faculties being shot, it sounded pretty good. It was quite enjoyable, baroquely enriching. I forgot to be depressed, staying up the night with the music of Dylan Thomas.
Feb 12, Matt rated it really liked it Shelves: Just a master of sheer language. His poetry works on your inner consciousness, you feel it and hear it before you think it. Untangling his syntax and his associations makes for some interesting reading all its own. His name meant "wave", as in the ocean, in Welsh. Imagine this simmering stew, this cauldron if you will, and you've got yourself something rich, evocative, stormy, and powerful. It's the goshdarn lifeforce in Just a master of sheer language. It's the goshdarn lifeforce incarnate. Go to the smaller, more obscure poems first.
Get yourself tied up in the bog water of his preoccupations before you read the stuff that's more plainspoken. And there's that rich history of pseudo-gaelic that makes the language edible and raw and bone-blunt.
I can't say enough about this guy, he's held me in rapture for years. I can't even focus on it too well since he is so visceral and obscure in all the best ways. Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not "Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night. Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. The sad truth is that the Welsh word wizard failed to rock my boat. I appreciated the lilting rhythms, the clever imagery, the brilliantly innovative use of words, the alliterative genius… all that. But I struggled to find meanings. But there were all the other inaccessible would-be gems, which left me cold. I hope I can find an audio version of the collected poems. Apr 29, Greg rated it really liked it Shelves: How do you criticize a volume of poetry such as this?
These are not ideas, these are words, formed together, which create ideas reflexively. The language is psychedelic, romantic, beautiful, paradoxical, mesmerizing. I love the opening stanzas of Fern Hill: Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green, The night above the dingle starry, Time let me hail and climb Golden in the heydays of his eyes, And honored among wagons I was prince of How do you criticize a volume of poetry such as this?
Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green, The night above the dingle starry, Time let me hail and climb Golden in the heydays of his eyes, And honored among wagons I was prince of the apple towns, And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves Trail with daisies and barley Down the rivers of the windfall light.
But seasons must be challenged or they totter Into a chiming quarter Where, punctual as death, we ring the stars; There, in his night, the black-tongued bells The sleepy man of winter pulls, Nor blows back mon-and-midnight as she blows. I suspect that, as with most prophetic words, one sees in them the ideas one wants to see, and the words give shape to nascent vision between every set of ears reading the wonderful lines.
Jun 15, Chris rated it it was ok. I tried to like it. God knows how hard I tried. The first half of the book was much more comprehensible than the last. The poems I did understand were absolutely amazing, which makes me think I'm just missing out on the poems I can't understand. Much of his stuff really seems like a word game to him. He toys with the meanings and sounds of words, actually calling himself in a letter to a friend "a freak user of words.
I feel like I could have progressed much farther with someone to help me through it. I hate giving a low rating to a book that I think has a lot of potential, but I have to be honest and say that it fell short of really moving me. I'm stuck with the question, "Was only part of it brilliant, or am I unable to keep up?
Maybe some of you Dylan Thomas fans out there can give me some direction. View all 3 comments. Jul 29, Donovan Richards rated it it was amazing. An iconic rock formation in the Cascade foothills, it is an easily identified landmark signifying entrance into the mountains through Interstate But recognition is a different phenomenon than true experience.
For me, this same principle applies to Dylan Thomas. Death, it seems, functions as the endpoint, the conclusion of narrative. Thomas often leans on the symmetry of life and death and the lengths to which humanity operates in avoidance of that final act. Here, it almost seems as if Thomas searches for beginnings hoping that the new will always push aside the inevitable demise of the human being. The reader feels the resolute spirit of Thomas often during Collected Poems. While death plays a central role in all of life, it will not govern us. For this reason, Thomas always seems caught in the middle between an obsession with the end and the fight to not let the end influence the present.
Often, the takeaway line—the most intriguing and artistic line intended to be exceptionally quotable—occurs at the conclusion of the poem. Each preceding line sets up the final point with gravitas. Not so with Thomas. His takeaway line occurs at the beginning, with expansion on the line building out from stanza to stanza. Much like my trip to Mt. Si, reading Collected Poems gave me a better understanding of an author I thought I knew.
Collected Poems affirms my thoughts on Dylan Thomas as a premier poet and I am glad to see his body of work is consistently good. If you are like me and you know of Dylan Thomas, bite the bullet and read Collected Poems. Originally published at http: Where I began writing, during a fine undergrad English major. I memorized a half hour of DT, not that easy, for Fern Hill has half lines where the mind can skip forward to a similar half-line.
I was shocked to see Fern Hill the farm in town, on a knoll a hundred yards above the old square. I volunteered to recite some DT at his cottage, now a teahouse. No go, "But you can recite some of his poems. Oct 06, Elizabeth rated it it was amazing. Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not g Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Jan 24, Eslam Mohammed rated it really liked it Shelves: Bernard "Michael Chaine"kept repeating these lines,of one of the remarkable poems of the heavenly-gifted poet Dylan Thomas: Jul 04, Charles Levenstein rated it it was amazing Shelves: Jun 26, Jacqueline rated it it was amazing Shelves: The heart is drained that, spelling in the scurry Of chemic blood, warned of the coming fury.
By the sea's side hear the dark-vowelled birds. Joy is the knock of dust, Cadaver's shoot Of bud of Adam through his boxy shift, Love's twilit nation and the skull of state, Sir, is your doom. What's never known is safest in this life. Hands of the stranger and holds of the ships, Hold you poison or grapes? The five kings count the dead but do not soften The crusted wound nor pat the brow; A hand rules pity as a hand rules heaven; Hands have no tears to flow.
I have heard may years of telling, And many years should see some change. The ball I threw while playing in the park Has not yet reached the ground. My nostrils see her breath burn like a bush. And death shall have no dominion. No more may gulls cry at their ears Or waves break loud on the seashores; Where blew a flower may a flower no more Lift its head to the blows of the rain; Though they be mad and dead as nails, Heads of the characters hammer through daisies; Break in the sun till the sun breaks down, And death shall have no dominion.
Lie dry, rest robbed, my beast. You have kicked from a dark den, leaped up the whinnying light, And dug your grave in my breast.
And taken by light in her arms at long and dear last I may without fail Suffer the first vision that set fire to the stars. Most of Dylan Thomas poems were for me difficult to make heads or tails. A poem which is powerful and resonates. I also liked many others such as Fern Hill and Altarwise by owl-light. Other poems were difficult to understand without a background in the classics.
This volume has dozens. If you are a writer a novelist, a poet, or just plain like the English language , you owe it to yourself to buy a copy of this volume and keep it on hand to remind yourself of what language is capable of doing. The busy-ness of life that causes us to miss the pleasures of cucumbers and the solace of night. Much like my trip to Mt. I haven't read much poetry, and I certainly did not read this critically, with intent to analyze. Gathered in this volume readers will find more than fifty years of poems by the incomparable Jack Gilbert, from his Yale Younger Poets prize-winning volume to glorious late poems, including a section of previously uncollected work.
I spent a lot of time looking up the poems to find out their meaning and listened on YouTube to Richard Burton reading them. I still struggled Most of Dylan Thomas poems were for me difficult to make heads or tails. I still struggled with the interpretations. I will keep the book and return to it now and again. Jul 30, Robert Jacoby rated it it was amazing Shelves: This slim volume has a special place on my shelf. Every so often I take it out and treat myself and I do mean treat myself to Dylan Thomas's gift to the world: Quite simply, I think he is the greatest poet to have ever written in the English language.
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