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95th out of 313 books
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174 voters
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Under Milk Wood
by
Dylan Thomas
A moving and hilarious account of a spring day in a small Welsh coastal town, Under Milk Wood is "lyrical, impassioned and funny, an Our Town given universality" (The New Statesman and Nation).
Paperback, 107 pages
Published
January 17th 1954
by New Directions Publishing Corporation
(first published 1954)
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Rewritten July 30th, 2011, read way back when and reread 2011
Some works of literature just beg to be read out loud - This is the House that Jack Built and Hiawatha are two that most people are familiar with. Under Milkwood too, is better appreciated read aloud.
A sample (read aloud with Welsh accent, sing-song, go up like a question at the end of the line):
FIRST VOICE
Mr Pugh, in the School House opposite, takes up the morning
tea to Mrs Pugh...more
Some works of literature just beg to be read out loud - This is the House that Jack Built and Hiawatha are two that most people are familiar with. Under Milkwood too, is better appreciated read aloud.
A sample (read aloud with Welsh accent, sing-song, go up like a question at the end of the line):
FIRST VOICE
Mr Pugh, in the School House opposite, takes up the morning
tea to Mrs Pugh...more
view all 21 comments
I like Dylan Thomas for two reasons
1. I grew up in Wales
2. I read his book Under Milk Wood when I was in school.
Wales is a strange place to grow up. For a start you're told as a child that it's full of castles and dragons and daffodils and that there is evil over the border (England) and that Rugby is the one true sport. Some of those things are true. I'm sure even Dylan Thomas thought them from time to time. I lived outside Cardiff and Thomas was busily engaged in being...more
1. I grew up in Wales
2. I read his book Under Milk Wood when I was in school.
Wales is a strange place to grow up. For a start you're told as a child that it's full of castles and dragons and daffodils and that there is evil over the border (England) and that Rugby is the one true sport. Some of those things are true. I'm sure even Dylan Thomas thought them from time to time. I lived outside Cardiff and Thomas was busily engaged in being...more
My dad was in this play when he was in college or something, so it made me like it more. But it also made me distracted because the whole time, I was imagining a younger version of my moustached father actually getting on stage to do Dylan Thomas...
Edit: Ok, not to DO Dylan Thomas. Jesus Christ, people...
Edit: Ok, not to DO Dylan Thomas. Jesus Christ, people...
I can honestly say that the world would be a lesser place if I had never read this play. It is not just that it is laugh-out-loud funny or that it is sad enough to make me weep - Captain Cat being forgotten by Rosie near the end is almost too painful to remember. But it is so full, so wonderfully overflowing with all the day to day concerns of life and love that it is a world in and of itself. Here is true creative genius.
From husbands purchasing books on how to poison their wives...more
From husbands purchasing books on how to poison their wives...more
Like most of Dylan Thomas' writing, this is an impressionistic play. There isn't really a plot in the conventional sense of conflict--rising action, climax, resolution-- but a series of characters, which as a whole make up this community. I can't even really picture a good way to stage this play, which is why I supposed it worked as a radio play. However, I am looking forward to a version from Netflix, to see how they staged this.
In fiction, well-wrought dialog ought to be preferred to stuff that “sounds real.” How it sounds to the ear (or mind) is key, and when it sounds good, readers will suspend their disbelief: “I wish I could have put it that way!” trumps “Why would he put it that way?” Thomas’ “play for voices” radiates proof: lyrical, alluring, witty dialog and nothing more… than proof that dialog alone can propel a narrative from start to finish. And what a narrative! Nearly a third takes place in pre-dawn an...more
I loved this. The text is so full of vitality and exuberance, humour and poignancy; the characters, however briefly described, are flesh and blood on the page; the language leaps and flows. Under Milk Wood is the story of a day in the life of a small Welsh town, a day that is no doubt repeated endlessly, the eccentric inhabitants trapped by their natures, their families, their dreams. I was hooked from the first lines: 'It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless
and bible-blac...more
and bible-blac...more
I first saw this play, finished only days before Dylan Thomas died in 1953 at age 39, in its movie form. I enjoyed the movie so much, I found a used paperback of the play. The play takes us on a walking tour over a day of a mythical small Welsh fishing village and one by one the residents speak. The play starts: "It is Spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched courters'-and-rabbits' wood limping invisible to the sloeback, sl...more
UNDER MILK WOOD. (1954?). Dylan Thomas. ****.
This radio drama was commissioned by the BBC, and ultimately run on air in 1954. It seems to be a piece constantly in progress. It is not an easy read. First off, there are about 72 different speaking roles, though I’m sure that several voices could be played by an individual reader. It’s the story of the people living in a town in Wales named Llareggub. You have to read the town’s name backwards to get its meaning. The piece was origi...more
This radio drama was commissioned by the BBC, and ultimately run on air in 1954. It seems to be a piece constantly in progress. It is not an easy read. First off, there are about 72 different speaking roles, though I’m sure that several voices could be played by an individual reader. It’s the story of the people living in a town in Wales named Llareggub. You have to read the town’s name backwards to get its meaning. The piece was origi...more
As I've said elsewhere, I love Thomas's words, his world. I've produced, directed and been part of three productions of this little play for voices. Once, in my early university days. The second time, after having hitchhiked from Cambridge to Laugharne one late winter week in the early 60s, after having gotten drunk in Dylan's pub, tried to befriend Dylan's pals and people, gone peeking through the dusty, spider-dwelt window of his writing shack on the top of the cliff above the sea, and, hav...more
MR PUGH...more
Pigs can't read, my dear.
MRS PUGH
I know one who can.
FIRST VOICE [narrator]
Alone in the hissing laboratory of his wishes, Mr Pugh minces among bad vats and jeroboams, tiptoes through spinneys of murdering herbs, agony dancing in his crucibles, and mixes especially for Mrs Pugh a venomous porridge unknown to toxicologists which will scald and viper through her until her ears fall off like figs, her toes grow big and black as balloons, and steam come
Dylan Thomas writes so amazingly beautifully. The story just flows and it is like music. The story is about nothing and yet about everything - just the ordinary nuances of life and community. The differences between the people in the town and their lives. I strongly recommend you read this - or watch a production of it.
Time passes. Listen. Time passes.
Come closer now.
Only you can hear the houses sleeping in the streets in the slow deep salt and
silent blac...more
Time passes. Listen. Time passes.
Come closer now.
Only you can hear the houses sleeping in the streets in the slow deep salt and
silent blac...more
Dylan Thomas, famous poet, turns his talent to a radio play detailing a day in the life of a small town cut off from the outside world by nature. The narrator creates the characters as the day goes, giving them their own speech lilts and falls as he watches over them with a fine sense of altruism. The narrator here is God, spurring his creations into life and letting them free. This is a different God, a God with no given laws. They live peaceful lives as an omnipresent force watches over them, ...more
Was confusing at first, but once you know what's going on then you'll start to love it. The play was meant to be a radio event, which means that it was supposed to be read out loud, and is probably the only way to read the book, and the language is so musical, even when the content at times is nonsensical. But this is the beauty of Under Milk Wood; a play about nothing, but at the same time everything. Nonetheless, it is most of all an argument for human innocence, an idyll to be achieved and ar...more
A radio 'feature', rather than a play, according to the introduction to my edition, Under Milk Wood is amazing. It's full of lively, unique description, a rapidfire sketch of village life. I can't even pick out a part I like best because all of it is vivacious and interesting. The description, on the first page, for just one example, of the night, 'starless and bible-black'. Dylan Thomas knew what he was doing when it came to language, at all times, and it shows.
The introduction to thi...more
The introduction to thi...more
Somewhere I heard this referred to as a verse play and thus bought a copy because Dylan Thomas is a favorite poet of mine. However, it only occasionally breaks out into verse and that is largely folksy, coming from the mouths of the residents of a small Welsh town. It's not the sonic fireworks I love in Thomas. So the poetry was entirely disappointing to me.
Dylan's prose, though, is rich and fun and the play overall is still enjoyable. The cast of characters are a bit of a jumble un...more
Dylan's prose, though, is rich and fun and the play overall is still enjoyable. The cast of characters are a bit of a jumble un...more
You can easily tell that Dylan Thomas is a poet through this play of his. That being said, I'm not sure how I feel about it. There was definitely a lot of detail and characterization, but no real plot. The play is about the waking-up and going-to-sleep of a Welsh town called Milk Wood, and that's about it. I guess when I read a play, I expect some action- I don't expect to just read some poetry. Granted, Dylan Thomas is a great poet; it's just not exactly what I look for in a play. There was als...more
A favourite since university (Cardiff!) days when I went to a semi-staged version with a narrator and mime artists who all wore black clothing (including balaclavas!) and mimed with a variety of face masks and props. This meant that the cast list was substantially less than that of the play. A friend also had a copy of the original radio play with Richard Burton's super Welsh voice making the most of the lovely words.
Reading it myself isn't quite the same, but it brings back both o...more
Reading it myself isn't quite the same, but it brings back both o...more
Richard Burton has a voice that makes people go all gooey, myself included. As the narrator of UMW in the versin I have, he is at his Welsh best, able to maximmise the force of the alliteration (we enunciate labial and lingual consonants differently) and bring to the fore West Wales in all its glory and duplicity. Beneath the thin veneer of Chapel morality, passions rage, drunkards curse and murders are plotted all with the self deprecating humour that is a part of the countryside where he wro...more
I'm not going to say too much about this because I am capable of appreciating that it's well written and that Thomas is trying to do something - and that he achieves what he intends to.
It's just not the sort of thing I would be interested in . . . it's almost like a play of Twitter - you get little snapshots about a character, then it moves on. As a result your learn something about the whole village, but nothing of any detail or note.
To read, I found the style of the narrator felt like a nevere...more
It's just not the sort of thing I would be interested in . . . it's almost like a play of Twitter - you get little snapshots about a character, then it moves on. As a result your learn something about the whole village, but nothing of any detail or note.
To read, I found the style of the narrator felt like a nevere...more
Well I'm from Swansea and know intimately the streets that Dylan Thomas walked so perhaps I'm prejudiced a little in his favour. But the work speaks for itself - it is a brilliant portrayal of life in the process of being lived, lovers in the moment of loving and lusting, neighbours naturally gossiping, a little prejudice but overall conveying the natural poetry of Thomas at its best. He was a poet and playwright of immense talent and this celebration of village life is one of his finest achiev...more
Hate:
MRS PUGH
Give me the parcel.
WILLY NILLY [postman whose wife reads all the mail to him before he delivers it:]
It's for Mr Pugh, Mrs Pugh.
MRS PUGH
Never you mind. What's inside it?
WILLY NILLY
A book called Lives of the Great Poisoners.
[later:]
MRS PUGH
Persons with manners do not read at table,
FIRST VOICE
says Mrs...more
MRS PUGH
Give me the parcel.
WILLY NILLY [postman whose wife reads all the mail to him before he delivers it:]
It's for Mr Pugh, Mrs Pugh.
MRS PUGH
Never you mind. What's inside it?
WILLY NILLY
A book called Lives of the Great Poisoners.
[later:]
MRS PUGH
Persons with manners do not read at table,
FIRST VOICE
says Mrs...more
An good social commentary on Welsh culture and its social aspects. It can be both funny and serious. Fast read as a play, but it made me want to visit the town that it was based on. I will also be on the look out for it as a play or on DVD so that I can see how a director might accomplish all the different things going on at once.
There is not a whole lot to the plot of this "play" but the language is just beautiful. Dylan Thomas develops the characters so deftly and I love his simultaneous thrift and liberality with words. I laughed out loud several times at the clever wordplay and character-driven humor. I'm tempted to read it again immediately.
Best read with a thick Welsh accent. These caricatures strike just close enough to real to really leave you laughing with humour that is subtle enough to make you feel clever when you see it. A fun read, best read aloud (if your accents are better than mine).
I read this for a project but it was surprisingly entertaining, original, and provocative. Of course I love Dylan and knew he was brilliant, but this was completely different from poems of his that im familiar with.
When reading this it is hard not to think of Thomas as being indulgently drunk and completely hoodwinking his publisher...but it is brilliant, particularly when read by Richard Burton as a talking book!
Damian Haas
rated it
Recommends it for:
tired people, ambien addicts
Recommended to Damian by:
curiosity
Not to hate on Dylan Thomas too much, but this "poem-play" sucks ass. I like most of his poetry and his story "Adventures in the Skin Trade." I've also been told that "A Child's Christmas in Wales" is very good, but don't let that convince you everything by him is good. There are flashes of his poetic language, but mostly it's just a plotless ramble of characters who aren't interesting going through a not interesting day in a not interesting town. Perhaps if I were ...more
I've listened to the BBC recording of the audio play so many times. It has so much life and character in the language - definitely something that gets better when read aloud or listened to.
Not the most clear or easy-to-read books I've read of late, but Thomas' word choice, composition, and brilliant imagery is enough to make it a great read...and then some.
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Dylan Marlais Thomas was a Welsh poet. He is regarded by many as one of the 20th century's most influential poets.
In addition to poetry, Thomas also wrote short stories and scripts for film and radio, with the latter frequently performed by Thomas himself. His public readings, particularly in America, won him great acclaim; his booming, at times ostentatious, voice with a subtle Welsh...more
More about Dylan Thomas...
In addition to poetry, Thomas also wrote short stories and scripts for film and radio, with the latter frequently performed by Thomas himself. His public readings, particularly in America, won him great acclaim; his booming, at times ostentatious, voice with a subtle Welsh...more
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“Let me shipwreck in your thighs.”
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“Now behind the eyes and secrets of the dreamers in the streets rocked to sleep by the sea, see the titbits and topsyturvies, bobs and buttontops, bags and bones, ash and rind and dandruff and nailparings, saliva and snowflakes and moulted feathers of dreams, the wrecks and sprats and shells and fishbones, whale-juice and moonshine and small salt fry dished up by the hidden sea.”
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25 people liked it
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