Dylan Thomas

In his crib, Dylan Thomas (1914-1953) is said to have vocalized in exuberant primal babble, an early sign of his amazing gift for the sonics of language. Audiences found him electrifying. His densely packed, lilting lines impressed people as poetry of a pure type; his spilling, alcoholic personality only contributed to his charisma. More skeptical, critical minds complained that behind his poetry’s highly original diction lay highly conventional sentiments.

In this month’s featured poem, Thomas’s faults are fully on display. Sense and insight take a back seat to tropes, which replicate like viruses, and to a tone of frenzied hysteria. A web search led me to just two explanatory statements: this poem is “an unusually black meditation on the self”; it’s a defense of the poet’s “inner privacy against the sharp examination of strangers and critics.” The latter interpretation seems the more likely one. Behind the sturm and drang, all this poem says is that Thomas distrusted the audiences he courted and despised anyone who dared to criticize his work. A more overheated, overwritten poem by a major voice would be hard to find.


O Make Me A Mask


O make me a mask and a wall to shut from your spies
Of the sharp, enamelled eyes and the spectacled claws
Rape and rebellion in the nurseries of my face,
Gag of a dumbstruck tree to block from bare enemies
The bayonet tongue in this undefended prayerpiece,
The present mouth, and the sweetly blown trumpet of lies,
Shaped in old armour and oak the countenance of a dunce
To shield the glistening brain and blunt the examiners,
And a tear-stained widower grief dropped from the lashes
To veil belladonna and let the dry eyes perceive
Others betray the lamenting lies of their losses
By the curve of the nude mouth or the laugh up the sleeve.



Bonus: Dubious First Lines of DT

Powerful Lungs Dept.
To-day, this insect, and the world I breathe

Amorous Slumber Dept.
I fellowed sleep who kissed me in the brain

Strange Behavior in Tombs Dept.
When, like a running grave, time tracks you down

Them Were The Days Dept.
Where once the waters of your face
Spun to my screws…

Clean Up This Mess Dept.
Once it was the colour of saying
Soaked my table…

Unremarkable Observations Dept.
The tombstone told when she died.

Let Tears Remember Where They Came From Dept.
Twenty-four years remind the tears of my eyes.

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