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Strenously crafted and powerfully lyrical, Dylan Thomas' poetry has bewitched generations of readers. Admired and loved for their ingenuity and potency, his poems celebrate both inner and outer landscapes in the face of mortality and decay, human weakness and shortcomings. Thomas is regarded by many to be the greatest - if controversial - Welsh poet of the twentieth century. ... Read more

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Dylan Thomas's letters to the many women in his life are among the most beautiful and lyrical he wrote. Provoked mostly by separations, they are cajoling, apologetic, uninhibited, tactical and loving. This collection includes letters to Pamela, his first love, to Caitlin, his equally flamboyant wife, and to later loves like Elizabeth Reitel, the woman who was with him on the night he died in New York. Like most great letter writers, Thomas had the gift of writing as if his correspondent stood in front of him. He could also use his letters to accomplish a number of tasks - to secure forgiveness, to make excuses, to amuse or deflect, to give an impression of confidence and ease. Sensual and earthy, like so much of his poetry, they were all designed to secure Thomas's place in his lover's heart and memory - the purpose of all true love letters. ... Read more

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Dylan Thomas evokes the flavour of life in a Welsh seaside town here, through the sharp and dreaming eyes of a boy and young man. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

beautiful book!!
Hemingway once said that "all good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse."
PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG DOG is one of those happy few books..beautifully written,funny, moving, cruel and joyful at the same time..please read it!!

Outstanding Memoir
This memoir is painful, beautiful, rugged. He shows himself to be proud, horrid, loving, sentimental. It is a small collection of short, powerful stories that span from childhood to young adulthood. He refers to himself at times in first person, other times in third (so you have to pay attention!). Growing into manhood, observing others and being observed. He expresses experiences of personal pride and humiliation with equal relish. Portraits of others in his life are humorous, admiring and at times sad. Hanging out with odd-balls; learning about women. It may have been a simpler time for technology, but the emotional struggles, the economic realities, the physical exertion required in a life in early 20th century Wales were harsh. All-in-all, this book is unforgettable.

Too good to be ignored
I would rather read this book than any by James Joyce.Thomas may be remembered for his wonderful poems, but his short pieces are, under no circumstances, to be ignored.

Thomas writes of his youth, which is asubject that many writers have attempted to write about, and where theyfall short he excells.The stories are nothing but fun.Actually, theyare more than fun; they are often beautiful.By all means, READ THIS!

Different and cool.
It's been a while since I read this book, but I wanted to be the first one to review!!The book was filled with small excerpts from Dylan Thomas' life, many of which dealt with surreal type encounters.The first part ofthe book seemed to lag somewhat, but the last story got me hooked and thenended in a very odd way, which was really cool.Maybe I shouldn't bewriting this, I'm no lit expert.I'd reccommend it though. ... Read more

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The first complete collection of Dylan ThomasÕs screenplays offers a unique portrait of his life and times as a professional film writer. ... Read more

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Scholarly Addition to the Dylan Literature
Excellent reading for the devotee, this set of essays is in the same league as,'You've Been with The Professors', which I'd also commend. The erudition and literary quality is such, that, like the aforementioned, the pertinence to their primary source may occasionally seem stretched. Whatever, these are well meditated pieces that offer a varied slant on the master manouverer, his sources, his influence and his expression. The pace is set by Greil Marcus's exploration of the significance of Hibbing High on the adolescent Bob, with especial attribution to his English teacher, Boniface Rolfzen. I was particularly attracted to Mick Cochrane's essay on Theme time radio, Alex Lubert's musings on,'Disabling', C P Lee's on the infamous '66 UK tour, the Thomas Crow investigation of the Andy Warhol connexions, and David Yaffe's tracing of the mature Bob which whets my appetite for his forthcoming tome, The Many Roads of Bob Dylan. ... Read more

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cutting edge-content - red-meat for truth seekers -unique approach and delivery - serious yet entertaining - modest yet provocative - controversial yet verifiable - Politics, religion, science, self-help ... Read more

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When the celebrated Welsh poet Dylan Thomas arrived in New York on his first visit, in 1950, for a tour of poetry readings around the country, America didn’t know what had hit it. Angelic, devilish, immoral, charming, self-destructive, given to alcoholic binges, he was not what the sober world of American academe had expected. Students loved him — although after his first few encounters with them, the girls had to be protected. And he made quick friends with countless American writers, journalists, and barflies, instantly creating a pop-culture mythology of the doomed artist for the late 20th century. The man who was Thomas’ patron and guide, the Boswell to his Johnson, was the young poet John Malcolm Brinnin, who watched horrified — though utterly beguiled by the poet’s charm and genius — at Thomas’ slow descent into hell. This is his harrowing account of the poet’s tragic last years. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Essential reading
Here is Dylan Thomas in all his maddening humanity: the houseguest of your nightmares who will steal your shirts, the visitor to a women's college who becomes embarrassingly excited by the sight of girls in casual dress.Brinnin chronicles all of Thomas's excesses including the poet's fatal marriage to alcohol.This book should be kept as a companion to Constantine Fitzgibbon's classic biography.In the end Brinnin-and the reader-forgive Dylan Thomas all his childishness because of the tidal waves of eloquence that arise from the Welsh poet's genius. Thomas is so overpowering a figure that one almost doesn't notice how brilliantly Brinnin has rendered him,as well as the social milieu of 1950's America.

Excellent supplemental reading for the study of Dylan Thomas
Welsh poet Dylan Thomas made history in his poetry readings to an American audience in 1950: his style and presentation went beyond most academic presentations of poetry and entered the realm of the personal. This provides a biography of Thomas which is key to understanding his works and experiences in this country, and will make for excellent supplemental reading for those studying his writings. ... Read more

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From the moment they met at a pub in London, drink was the most conspicuous part of the lives of Caitlin and her 'genius poet', Dylan Thomas. It fuelled their sexual adventures, lessened their shyness and enriched their social life. This searing book is Caitlin's story of the passions, the rage and the tragic humour of those years of drink and the toll it took on the lives of two talented people, leaving one of them dead at the age of thirty-nine, and the other alone, penniless and an alcoholic. It is also the memoir of a woman not always likeable, but consistently energetic and honest and possessing an indomitable spirit. ... Read more

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2.75 stars:Abstruse & obtuse
From page 110, part of Hardy's treatment of Dylan Thomas's early poem "The Force that Through the Green Fuse":

'The topos of reflexivity is a figure in a poem which makes explicit what is implicitly being said throughout the poem about creativity in the largest sense of the word.'

Unquote!Safe to say that this book can be skipped.Even more of a displeasure than the occasional abstruseness of the prose, however, is Hardy's relentless intrusion of her own personality, her own politics, her own life story, into what is ostensibly a book about Dylan Thomas's prose and poetry.In remarks about the poem "If My Head Hurt a Hair's Foot," Hardy loftily proclaims that because of her ardent feminism, she had qualms about a poem written by a man on the theme of pregnancy.Well, forgive us, Mrs Hardy, but who cares?Hardy praises Dylan Thomas's freedom from the insanity of nationalism (as if nationalism were the 20th century's foremost political evil!), but after raising the topic of politics (hardly germane to most of Thomas's work), she doesn't speculate as to whether Thomas's romanticizing of socialism and communism was particularly astute.

Finally, and this is the most damnable offense, she tells us absolutely nothing new about the poetry or prose of Dylan Thomas; she tells us nothing that could not have been gleaned from Ackerman's book WELSH DYLAN, or Paul Ferris's biography of Dylan Thomas, or William York Tindall's monumental (if sometimes complex) READER'S GUIDE TO DYLAN THOMAS, or the "Twentieth Century Views" collection of essays, edited by C. B. Cox.

Anything to praise about Hardy's work?Well, there is evidence of intelligence in the writing (and a Richard Howard-like fondness for the French or Latin expression where a plain old Saxon one will do quite nicely); her exploration of the alliterative patterns in "After the Funeral" is first-rate; and she is willing to focus her scrutiny on poems and other works by Thomas that do not often benefit from critical attention ("On No Work of Words," "Once It Was the Colour of Saying," and the stories in "Portrait ... Young Dog").She does admire Dylan Thomas, has read him thoroughly, and her praises are never at the expense of an appropriate critical caution.Still, not enough here to redeem what is ultimately an oppressively stodgy book, far from essential to the admirer of Thomas, and marred by the author's need to make pronouncements and self-admiring references that are neither relevant nor engaging. ... Read more

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A collection of poetry, written and read by Dylan Thomas. ... Read more

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Dylan Thomas reading his poetry
Excellent 2 audio-cassette recording of all the major, and some minor, Dylan Thomas poems including 'Fern Hill', 'Poem in October', 'Do not go gentle' etc. My favourites are 'Over Sir John's Hill', 'Hunchback in the Park', 'On the marriage of a virgin', 'Light breaks where no sun shines' - all on these tapes. I was hoping that the recording would include Thomas' famous introduction to poetry called 'A few words of a kind' but sadly that is not on these tapes. ... Read more

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Adventures in the Skin Trade

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Here is a compelling account of the romantic lives and times of five great writers of this century--D.H. Lawrence, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry Miller, Dyland Thomas and Sylvia Plath. Passionate Lives evokes how these writers lived on the cutting edge of passionate intensity, shows how their own love affairs influenced their writing, and brings a unique perspective to the work and lives of some of the best literary artists of the 20th century. ... Read more

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Mining new material, including personal letters from Thomas himself, Paul Ferris recounts the life of this tragic figure

"A hilarious, shocking, sad story...a brilliant book."
-Kingsley Amis

Dylan Thomas's life and work have made him a legendary figure in the decades since his death, amidst alcohol and debts, in New York at the age of thirty-nine. At the heart of his achievement are a few dozen poems and stories which, together with his "play for voices," Under Milk Wood, haunt the imagination and give his writing a broader appeal than he could have envisioned in his lifetime.

Consumed by his vocation as The Poet, ever doubting his own talent, Thomas spent much of life reflecting upon his own worth. But beyond his writing is the checkered figure of the man himself: often comic, at times in despair, always self-obsessed, in the end defeated by his own nature.Amazon.com Review
This new edition of Paul Ferris's perceptive biography, which was originally published in 1977, is primarily notable for its frank portrait of the poet's marriage to Caitlin Macnamara Thomas, who died in 1994. "The essential truth about the Dylan-Caitlin relationship," Ferris writes, "was that his dependent nature left him vulnerable in later years when his wife withdrew her affection and became blatantly promiscuous." Yet the author is not unsympathetic to Caitlin, whose biography he wrote in 1993. The accounts of Thomas's raucous, drunken visits to America, where he died in 1953 at age 39, will certainly incline readers to forgive anything his wife did in revenge. The book's principal strengths remain what they were in 1977: a knowledgeable, in-depth account of the poet's childhood in Wales (Ferris himself was born a mile from Thomas's childhood home); a lucid disentangling of myth from fact in both interviews and contemporary sources; and a sensitive understanding that "behind the public cavortings was a private agony." This is Ferris's real subject, the agony of a boy who was "pretty ... spoiled ... the darling of the family," and who never managed to grow up enough to create a life that would support his poetic gifts. It's a sad story but a fascinating one. --Wendy Smith ... Read more

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Preoccupied with littleness
Having read John Malcolm Brinnin's account of Dylan Thomas in America and Caitlin Thomas's autobiographical work LEFTOVER LIFE TO KILL I find this biography fair and comprehensive.It contains appropriate scholarly apparatus.Both Dylan and his sister Nancy had great imaginations.Dylan's father came from a rural family.He became a schoolmaster.He grew to be an unhappy man.Thomas poems are songs about mysteries without solution.They are melancholy, Celtic, non-English.Thomas denied the influence of Gerard Manley Hopkins.He liked technical virtuousity.In school he was protected by being his father's son.

In 1935 he met Vernon Watkins and came to respect him as a poet and as a critic.Thomas also came to know Geoffrey Grigson, Norman Cameron, and A.J.P. Taylor.The idea developed that Thomas needed to be protected from women and drink and that he had difficulty with his lungs, bronchitis.Pamela Hansford Johnson was a girlfriend in the early years.In 1936 Edith Sitwell became Thomas's chief advocate.

In 1936 he met Caitlin.They married in 1937.As he grew older he wrote less quickly.By age twenty one he had written half of the poems in his COLLECTED POEMS.He wrote surrealist stories and reviews for which he was paid poorly.Caitlin was buxom and he was thin.In 1938 they went to Laugharne.For Thomas Wales was a place and a frame of mind.The reader is struck by how early in Dylan Thomas's career themes menacing survival surfaced.There are issues of poverty, drink, work for the BBC, revision of work to evade censors, and merry times in London versus periods of restraint and work in Wales.Stories for PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG DOG and ADVENTURES IN THE SKIN TRADE were set out and virtually completed when Thomas was in his early twenties.

Thomas managed to avoid service during World War II.The war interferred with the sale of his writings.He wrote film scripts.The work was facile.John Davenport felt that he had lost his lyrical gift and was left with nothing but a public personality.

Poetry returned at the end of the war."Fern Hill" dates from 1945.UNDER MILK WOOD and "A Child's Christmas in Wales" were started.After the war he ws able to work for the Third Programme for the BBC.Roy Campbell found him to be the best reader.He was in demand as an actor and speaker. Edith Sitwell was aghast that he wanted to go to America.For the time being the family went to Italy.

In 1949 the Boat House at Laugharne came on the market.Dylan often spoke of dying young.Caitlin felt that he was never too keen on life.The family moved to the Boat House in 1949."Over Sir John's hill" was produced.It was related to "Fern Hill" and "Poem in October."

Dylan received the long awaited invitation to America.UNDER MILK WOOD was still largely unwritten.He lived an eccentric life there without paying much attention to the country.His guide and advisor was John Malcom Brinnin.His reading while on the tour at Mount Hoyoke was described as a miracle.Once reading he took hold of himself.In 1950 Dylan Thomas's writing was more highly regarded than it was later.

Little of the money earned in America in 1950 found its way to Wales.In 1951 "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" was addressed to his father who was ill. Dylan and Caitlin arrived in America in January 1952.The visit was part farce, part tragedy.Social occasions were difficult.Dylan's favorite bar in New York City was the White Horse Tavern.Dylan and Caitlin stayed in the Chelsea Hotel.

Thomas entered into an agreement with Caedmon, a company started by two alert young women, and recorded "A Child's Christmas in Wales."COLLECTED POEMS1934-1952 was published in November.The review that most pleased Dylan was by Stephen Spender.For understanding the magic of the poet's function Dylan was indebted to his father who was now dying.

In 1953, contrary to legend, Dylan was not really a penniless poet.He was, however, always uncertain of his powers, always consumed with his littleness.He returned to America in April 1953.He was still working on UNDER MILK WOOD.He returned to England in June.Milk Wood revisions dragged on through the summer.

In October 1953 Dylan returned to New York.His troubles had begun long before.His father and his sister died that year.He, too, was to die.Morphine, insult to the brain, something triggered the coma from which he did not emerge. ... Read more

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Rich and original, vigorous and memorable, these 70 poems are selected from across Thomas' entire poetic career and from both his published and unpublished work. This study edition contains both the poems and a commentary upon them. ... Read more