Dylan Thomas: Collected Poems 1934-1952

Time held me green and dying Though I sang in my chains like the sea Published a year before the poet’s death at the age of 39, Collected Poems 1934-1952 comprises Dylan Thomas’ own selection from his short, but remarkable writing life. He himself states in the introductory note that this volume contains ‘most of the poems I have written, and all, up to the present year, I wish to preserve.’ These include some of the most famous, beloved and critically admired poems of the twentieth century— ‘Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night’, ‘In My Craft or Sullen Art,’ ‘Fern Hill’ and ‘Death Shall Have No Dominion’. As popular with the reading public as he was admired by critics, Dylan Thomas could convincingly be called the last of Britain’s great Romantic poets. His exquisite lyric verses contain all of life, from birth to death and the joys and heartaches in between; his concerns are universal, while his inspiration was specific, the landscape and people of South Wales, his beloved birthplace. Dylan Thomas’ image in the popular imagination as a tragic, troubled and unruly literary figure inspired many of the great figures in Post-war culture, from bringing countryman Richard Burton to worldwide recognition in his posthumous ‘play for voices’, Under Milk Wood, to reportedly providing a young Robert Zimmerman with a newsurname . This edition is a faithful reissue of the 1952 original, treating Thomas’ editorial decisions as definitive and retaining the hauntingly prophetic context of its publication.