The poetry background of Dylan Thomas gives these reminiscences a certain
lyrical quality:
Years and years ago, when I was a boy, when there
were wolves in Wales, and birds the color of
red-flannel petticoats whisked past the harp-shaped
hills, when we sang and wallowed all night and
day in caves that smelt like Sunday afternoons in
damp front farmhouse parlors, and we chased,
with the jawbones of deacons, the English and the
bears, before the motor car, before the wheel,
before the duchess-faced horse, when we rode the
daft and happy hills bareback, it snowed and it
snowed. But here a small boy says: "It snowed last
year, too. I made a snowman and my brother
knocked it down and I knocked my brother down and
then we had tea."
"But that was not the same snow," I say. "Our snow
was not only shaken from white wash buckets
down the sky, it came shawling out of the ground
and swam and drifted out of the arms and hands
and bodies of the trees; snow grew overnight on
the roofs of the houses like a pure and grandfather
moss, minutely -ivied the walls and settled on the
postman, opening the gate, like a dumb, numb
thunder-storm of white, torn Christmas cards."
And they are wonderfully evocative of his Welsh youth.
But for me they also evoked another memory, of a trip that Bud Rouse
and I made up to Saratoga. We visited friends of his who worked at
the track and had a horse of their own (Double Russian was the name, if
memory serves). We had fun at the races, hanging on the far side
with all the Hispanic groomsmen and walkers and cussing out prima donna
jockeys. And after dinner and a few frosties that night, our host
took down a collection of Dylan Thomas poems and we took turns reading
them aloud. It was precisely the kind of affected scene that you'd
expect in a Manhattan novel or like something out of a gutter version of
Jane Austen, but I'll be damned if we didn't have fun.
The best, most treasured, books and writers of our lives become entwined
in our existence in just such odd and unique ways. Then any time
we encounter them again, they trigger a cascade of memories. For
no reason that will ever matter to anyone else, Dylan Thomas is such a
writer for me. But I think everyone will enjoy this short but terrific
memoir.
(Reviewed:12-Dec-99)
Grade: (A)
Websites:
Book-related and General Links:
-World
of Dylan Thomas: Craft or Sullen Art
-Dylan Thomas.com
-The
Craft And Art Of Dylan Thomas: Dylan Marlais Thomas (1914 - 1953)(many
of the poems)
-Dylan
Thomas Centre Website (Swansea, Wales)
-Dylan
Marlais Thomas (1914-1953)
-Dylan
Thomas (Academy of American Poets)
-Dylan
Thomas
-DYLAN
THOMAS CHRONOLOGY
-ETEXT:
A Child's Christmas in Wales
-RADIO
ESSAY: The Responsibilities of a Poet ( Dylan Thomas argued that poets
who succumb to the allure of the difficult are in danger of losing their
audience, and something essential in their art. This is from a 1946 radio
program, included in "On the Air With Dylan Thomas: The Broadcasts," edited
by Ralph Maud (New Directions)
-REVIEW:
(Quentin Bell: Fine Art for Kids, NY Review of Books)
The Work of E.H. Shepard
edited by Rawle Knox
Edward Ardizzone: Artist
and Illustrator by Gabriel White
Nicholas and the Fast Moving
Diesel by Edward Ardizzone
A Child's Christmas in Wales
by Dylan Thomas and illustrated by Edward Ardizzone
-ESSAY:
DYLAN THOMAS IN AMERICA - DOWN AND UP IN NEW YORK AND SAN FRANCISCO
(NY Times)
-ARTICLE:
DYLAN THOMAS IS HONORED BY BRITAIN (NY Times, March 2, 1982)
-REVIEW
: of Dylan the Bard: A Life of Dylan Thomas by Andrew Sinclair (Anthony
Thwaite, booksonline uk)
-REVIEW:
(Robert Craft: Lives of the Poets, NY review of Books)
The Collected Letters of
Dylan Thomas edited by Paul Ferris
Journals 1939-1983 by Stephen
Spender and edited by John Goldsmith
Night and Day edited and
with an introduction by Christopher Hawtree
-REVIEW:
of The Life of Dylan Thomas by Paul Ferris (Karl Miller, NY Review
of Books)
-REVIEW:
(Matthew Hodgart: Old Pup, NY Review of Books)
Selected Letters of Dylan
Thomas edited and with commentary by Constantine Fitzgibbon
A Concordance to The Collected
Poems of Dylan Thomas by R.C. Williams
-REVIEW:
(Conor Cruise O'Brien: The Dylan Cult, NY Review of Books)
The Life of Dylan Thomas
by Constantine FitzGibbon
Dylan Thomas and Poetic
Dissociation by David Holbrook
-REVIEW:
(John Wain: Dylan Thomas Today, NY Review of Books)
Dylan Thomas, His Life and
Work by John Ackerman
The Days of Dylan Thomas
by Bill Read and Rollie McKenna
Dylan Thomas and Poetic
Dissociation by David Holbrook
Comments:
Orrin welcomes reader comments on his reviews.
Add yours here.
Reading Thomas aloud - my mother tried a few years back to introduce "reading poetry aloud" into our family. I thought it fey and affected and didn't do it willingly.
Anyway, that day, I selected "Fern Hill" and besides being self-conscious about reading poetry aloud, was also self-conscious that I couldn't do more than 5 lines at a time without having to stop to collect myself.
- Brian Jones
- Oct-28-2003, 13:13
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