Dylan Thomas
Dylan Thomas
Dylan Marlais Thomaswas a Welsh poet and writer whose works include the poems "Do not go gentle into that good night" and "And death shall have no dominion"; the 'play for voices' Under Milk Wood; and stories and radio broadcasts such as A Child's Christmas in Wales and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog. He became widely popular in his lifetime and remained so after his premature death at the age of 39 in New York City. By...
NationalityWelsh
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth27 October 1914
CitySwansea, Wales
Reading one's own poems aloud is letting the cat out of the bag. You may have always suspected bits of a poem to be overweighted, overviolent, or daft, and then, suddenly, with the poet's tongue around them, your suspicion is made certain.
In the beginning was the word, the word That from the solid bases of the light Abstracted all the letters of the void....
Rage, rage against the dying light
Hands have not tears to flow.
A worm tells summer better than the clock, The slug's a living calendar of days; What shall it tell me if a timeless insect Says the world wears away?
Chastity prays for me, piety sings, Innocence sweetens my last black breath, Modesty hides my thighs in her wings, And all the deadly virtues plague my death!
In the beginning was the secret brain. The brain was celled and soldered in the thought
Shall I let in the stranger, Shall I welcome the sailor, Or stay till the day I die? Hands of the stranger and holds of the ships, Hold you poison or grapes?
When logics die, The secret of the soil grows through the eye, And blood jumps in the sun; Above the waste allotments the dawn halts.
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down, And death shall have no dominion.
You just wait. I'll sin 'til I blow up!
...And time cast forth my mortal creature To drift or drown upon the seas Acquainted with the salt adventure Of tides that never touch the shores. - I who was rich was made the richer By sipping at the the vine of days...
To begin at the beginning: It is a spring moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black.
I've just had eighteen straight whiskies. I think that's the record.