Collected Poems 1934-1952

by Dylan Thomas

Collected Poems 1934-1952

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493 ratings, 4.31 average rating, 48 reviews (more data...)

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published

June 1971 (first published 1952) by New Directions Publishing Corporation

binding

Paperback, 203 pages

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...

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Dylan Thomas

isbn

0811202054 (isbn13: 9780811202053)

description

Dylan Thomas's poems gambol & frisk across the tongue & imagination like those of few poets. His choicely crafted (often synaesthetic) phrase...more

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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 649)

All ratings | 5 stars (237) | 4 stars (181) | 3 stars (66) | 2 stars (8) | 1 star (1) | avg 4.31

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matt

matt rated it:

02/12/08

bookshelves: poetic-rapture, top-shelf, worldly-lit

Read in April, 1997

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.

He said his three biggest influences were Yeats (I think), The Bible, and Freud.

Imagine this simmering stew, this cauldron if you will, and you've got yourself something rich, evocative, stormy, and powerf...more

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Paul

Paul rated it:

01/12/08

Read in January, 1994

What can I say? Still my all-time favorite. Maddeningly dense and self-absorbed in places, but always a master of language and sound. The closer you look, the more you see just how carefully constructed the poems are, and how he pulls off complicated structures with disarming ease. Just hearing the poems out loud is a transcendent experience, and many of the best are available online in his voice.

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R.Joseph

R.Joseph rated it:

09/03/07

bookshelves: vampran

This collection has the great poems “Fern Hill” and “Light Breaks Where No Sun Shines”. This collection also holds one of my personal favorite poems of all times, the simple yet majestic “I Have Longed To Move Away”. This book is a great introduction to Thomas’s work.

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erik graff

erik rated it:

09/25/08

bookshelves: literature

Read in December, 1971

recommended to erik by: Richard Hyde
recommends it for: English speakers

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 stupo...more 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! 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. 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....less

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Ymatt Jacintho

Ymatt Jacintho rated it:

11/01/08

Read in January, 2008

I have, for a long time, enjoyed listening to his recorded readings. Each time I listen to him, I know a lustier poet could not exist. His lust for experience—for the "Light (that) breaks where no sun shines" or the "rub of love"—comes across in the verve contained in his choice words and in the mechanism of his voice. Thomas owned the unusual gift of Being, within himself and within the pulse of other living things that would later become the inspiration for his work... ...more

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Phyllis

Phyllis rated it:

09/08/07

Read in January, 1996

recommends it for: anyone who thinks poetry sucks

OK, I admit it. I bought this after I heard "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" at a young man's funeral. I did not know at the time that it's a funeral cliche. The guy who read it didn't exactly read it. He screamed and cried it in grief and rage. I was more moved than I'd ever been by a poem. I told a college friend about it, and he said, "uh, isn't that the poem Rodney Dangerfield recites in 'Back To School?'" In horror, I realized he was right. So he kinda rui...more

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James

James rated it:

01/15/08

Read in January, 2008

I'm a confessed poetry junky...

This collection had most of the standard poems you'd expect with a few interestings exceptions. Interesting because Thomas compiled this list himself and addressed the collection to his readers "The strangers." I enjoyed reading a few I either hadn't read before or that often and wondering what it was about a particular poem that made Thomas want it included. I was pleased that, just like the poems I'm more familiar with, most of these others hold ...more

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Kristen

Kristen rated it:

03/11/08

bookshelves: currently-reading

I'm currently in the midst of re-reading my poems of Dylan Thomas book, given to me by my best friend Jacqui in VA in 1986...I obviously had no idea what I was reading, I just knew he was important. I actually think I understand him now less, thanks to my scientific training, if that makes sense. But I love the lyrical flow of his words and the imagery, even if I can't exactly interpret each work. Good night-time browsing before bed fodder.

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Rick

Rick rated it:

07/04/08

I have loved many of these verses since adolescence. They have contributed many phrases to my everyday conversation, to the occasional puzzlement of hearers. "Famous among the barns," Mr. Thomas says, ironically referring to the "fame" we imagine we have among our close associates - few of whom ever give us a thought or would be distressed if we should softly and suddenly vanish away.

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Don

Don rated it:

07/25/07

bookshelves: neverfinishedbutwantto, poetry, reference, to-read

Another poetry book I've not read cover-to-cover but have mined extensively. Thomas' poetry is so syllabic (to quote him) and so full of blarney and drunken verbosity that one can get bogged down with the quest for meaning. I prefer to read this as nearly incomprehensible hymns to living and nature that effect something powerful in the words and lines.

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Colleen

Colleen rated it:

04/01/07

The power of Thomas's language is undeniable. Sentences like "Time held me green and dying/ Though I sang in my chains like the sea" still linger in my mind. This collection is particularly good since Thomas himself selected them a year before his death. So get the book, go to the White Horse Bar and lift a pint in tribute to this great poet.

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Maureen

Maureen rated it:

06/05/08

bookshelves: poetry

Read in January, 1967

recommends it for: everyone

When I graduated from high school, the only gift I received from my parents was a copy of this book. It sat on my bookshelf for many years, until someone stole it. I am still mad about it, because the poems are classics, and if you only have room for one volume of Dylan Thomas' poetry on your bookshelf, this should be the one.

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Resonance

Resonance rated it:

10/31/08

Amazing work. Dylan Thomas's imagery gives me goosebumps. He once described his method as a sequential establishment and interplay of images, letting the images do the work of his poetry, each image changing each prior image and the entire work thus evolves as you read, his lines like the chapters in a play.

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David

David rated it:

09/16/08

I've been reading Dylan Thomas' poetry since I was a teenager - many years ago - and still after all these years I come back to it again and again. The richness, the of his language, the sheer joy of words and the way they're not only written but spoken - they strike a deep and resonating note.

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Saptarishi

Saptarishi rated it:

08/01/07

perhaps not suited for those of you completely turned away from faith based writing, destiny, love, religion, God etc in media and literature....this collection if nothing else provides the kind of temptation that no evengelism can touch.

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kate

kate rated it:

07/22/08

recommends it for: poetry lovers english lovers

The reason I fell in love with poetry. His imagery and the power and flow of his words humble me. Recordings of his poetry readings with that baritone and welsh accent are awe inspiring - a bard for all ages.

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Skylar

Skylar rated it:

08/27/08

bookshelves: poetry

I so loved Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night that I wanted to love Dylan Thomas more, and I tackled the collected poems, but he just doesn't rank up there for me with my other favorite poets.

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Elaine

Elaine rated it:

12/19/07

bookshelves: currently-reading

Read in November, 2007

recommends it for: Poetry lovers

This isn't the exact book i've got, mine is Poems (everyman poetry) by Dylan Thomas and Walford Davies and this is a great book. I love the poem 'Do not go gentle into that good night' in particular.

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Ernie

Ernie rated it:

05/15/07

bookshelves: poetry

Read in March, 2001

"Fern Hill" is one of the most beautiful poems in twentieth century literature. And everything else in Thomas' compressed, darkly exuberant oeuvre is pretty amazing too.

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Mary

Mary rated it:

08/20/07

recommends it for: Poetry fans.

He didn't go gentle into that good night, but he went too soon. It always amazes me that such a troubled person could make brilliant sense of his life on paper.

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