Thomas, Dylan

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Dylan Thomas Collection
The voice of a poet
Dylan Thomas The Caedmon CD Collection
Dylan Thomas
Tremendous Bargain for Thomas' Great Voice

Dylan Thomas:The Caedmon CD Collection
Dylan Thomas
Manufacturer: Caedmon
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio CD

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ASIN: 0060790830
Release Date: 2004-11-09

Book Description

Beginning in February 1952, Dylan Thomas made a series of memorable and historic recordings for a new record label called Caedmon. In fact, Dylan Thomas was the first to record for this new label, started by two 22-year-old women, Marianne Roney and Barbara Cohen. Little did they know that in addition to capturing a part of history they also launched an industry of spoken-word recording. This collection not only contains the incredible Caedmon recording sessions, but also recordings from the BBC, CBC, and other archival material Caedmon originally published in the 1950s and 1960s. Highlights include: "A Child's Christmas in Wales" and "Five Poems"; "Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night", his prose: Adventures in the Skin Trade and Quite Early One Morning, and his final work - Under Milk Wood, a play. With stunning original album cover art, and an introduction read by former poet laureate Billy Collins, this unique collection includes not only Dylan Thomas reading his finest works, but also rare recordings of Thomas reading his favorite writers, including W.H. Auden and William Shakespeare.

Customer Reviews:

Dylan Thomas Collection.......2007-05-27

Excellent cd series.
Thomas' pipe-organ voice resonates on every track.
His wit and humor pushes the envelope for its time. Bobby socksers,the hang-over of those early Cold War years,post war America full of booms and busts and Levit-towns. Picture too a staid America, the 1950s campus life just before "the Cool" hit, before the Folk revival scene, pre Beats.

Now enter the mop-headed Welsh bard replete with his double entendre openings to audiences. Audiences who are mostly undergrads and academics. Thomas has them laughing in all the right places ... its poetry without a laugh track or safety net.

The readings are good, the explantions sometimes meandering but always enjoyable and highly listenable.

Recommend this to any school teachers, lovers of poetry, Britophiles, students... with a willingness to sit back, listen and have a master of the craft weave vistas of Welsh seaside villages, lush countrysides, closed gray coal pits, lecherous and harmless characters and everywhere there are forests to see for the trees.

The voice of a poet .......2007-04-22

No other poet I know of -reads his own poetry as well as does Dylan Thomas.
There is the rich melliflousness and the booming strength- there is the mystery of the sounded word made musical. There is too the dramatic play and fun of a large childlike soul , suddenly sad and then in an instant mockingly critical.
Poetry is the deepest expression of feeling in words.
In this sense Thomas is an especially poet , whose poems can be felt not only when read in silence, but most especially when sounded by his own majestic and magnificent voice.

Dylan Thomas The Caedmon CD Collection.......2007-03-19

It sounds like Dylan Thomas is in the room. His voice is clear. Poems are fabulous. Introductions are informative and interesting.

Dylan Thomas.......2007-01-22

I was originally looking for poet's readings of his famous Under Milkwood play when I bumped into this gem. It has everything a D.Thomas fan might want. WHile the sound quality is at times rather poor, this is by far the fullest collection which I highly recomend to anyone who enjoys poetry.

Tremendous Bargain for Thomas' Great Voice.......2006-01-07

The reviewer who called this a bad value is completely wrong. This set includes the COMPLETE Caedmon recordings of Thomas' incredible voice. Though a few of these original LP's were fairly common (Child's Christmas in Wales), many of the LPs were rare. People were bidding $50-$100 and up for some of these single LPs only recently. Here you have MANY CDs for the price of one! It would be nice to have an extensive book with this set, but you can always buy Dylan's books seperately. The set includes mini-LP cover sleeves for all of Thomas' original LP covers (though thin paper sleeves), another nice touch. Don't let this one get away. When it is out-of-print, it will probably go for $200-$300 and up!

The Poems of Dylan Thomas, New Revised Edition [with CD]

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A great Welsh Poet!
The Definitive Anthology Of His Poetry
The most powerful of all the modern poets
A popular poet with fine talents, and some immortal lines
Will you like Dylan Thomas?

The Poems of Dylan Thomas, New Revised Edition [with CD]

Manufacturer: New Directions Publishing Corporation
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0811215415

Book Description

The most complete edition of the works of one of the twentieth century's greatest poets.

This new, revised edition of The Poems of Dylan Thomas is based on the collection edited by Thomas's life-long friend and fellow poet, Daniel Jones, first published by New Directions in 1971. Jones started with the ninety poems Thomas selected for his Collected Poems in 1952 (at a time when the poet expected that many years of work still lay ahead of him) and, after exhaustive research and consideration, added one hundred previously finished, though uncollected, poems (including twenty-six juvenile works), and two unfinished poems, and arranged them all in chronological order of composition, creating the most complete edition of Thomas's poems ever published.

This revised edition contains all the original material and incorporates textual corrections. Also included are an Introduction and concise notes by Daniel Jones, a brief chronology of the poet's life, and a compact disc containing vintage recordings of Thomas reading eight of his poems in his famous "Welsh-singing" style, making this edition of The Poems of Dylan Thomas a truly remarkable collection.

Customer Reviews:

A great Welsh Poet!.......2007-06-12

Some of Dylan thomas's greatest work.
I spend many hours just browsing through and marvelling at his command of the English Language. Recommended for all lovers of poetry.

The Definitive Anthology Of His Poetry.......2007-03-06

If you truly are a lover of great poetry than this book should be very satisfying. Over the years there have been several volumes that have tried to attempt to collect some of the best poems by Dylan Thomas but none has come close to how complete and accurate this book is. THE POEMS OF DYLAN THOMAS, collects practically every poem that he ever wrote during his lifetime. All of his greatest and best loved poems are here and an added bonus is the CD in the back flap of the book(a special treat by all means) which has the acclaimed poet reciting eight short poems which are also included in the book. Dylan Thomas only lived to the age of 39, but in his brief run here on planet earth he wrote some of the finest, romantic and beautiful poems of his generation. Poetry scholars and literary historians have called him the greatest poet of the 20th century and although there have been many great poets (too many to mention) he stands as one of the most well known and best loved poetic geniuses of all times. Great book of poems that I highly recommend for anyone that has ever been moved and stimulated by the beauty and euphoria that poetry like the ones contained in this beautiful book can bring to a person's soul.

The most powerful of all the modern poets .......2006-08-27

As a reader of his own poems Dylan Thomas has no equal. The immense power, the great musicality , the depth of feeling are simply above those of other writers I know. Compare the tepid TS Eliot slowly measuring out his syllables, to the booming flow of Thomas' poetry.
But the voice on the C.D. is one thing, and the poems as we read them another.
The poems are often to me too unclear and mysterious. Yet they at their best have a richness, a power in feeling, a strength uniquely their own.
In his greatest poems there are great memorable lines' Do not go gentle into that good night, Rage, rage against the dying of the light " Or at the end of another great poem about dying , "After the first death there is no other"
As I feel his verse Thomas belongs with Wallace Stevens and Gerald Manley Hopkins and Yeats and Keats and Shakespeare as great makers and masters of their own special music.
What a treasure.

A popular poet with fine talents, and some immortal lines.......2005-09-26

Dylan Thomas is immortal for the phrase "rage against the dying of the light", and probably should be. He had a real gift for the music in words. At first it seems that they should all be set to music, but as you hear them and let them play in your mind, you realize they are already their own setting. Some of his poems have been set to music, but none improved.

While I praise his real and powerful gifts, I also want to note that there is a certain adolescence in his themes of dying and death that, for me, diminish his greatness. However, it has and continues to attract the young who, in the abundance of everthing that is youth, think it mature and so, so, sophisticated to pine for death. For example in his own epitaph, he is upset with the fact that he has to die and blames his mother for bringing him into a world where his fate is to feed worms. Please! This from a man who basically drank himself to death at a sadly early age (not tragically - drinking yourself to death is hardly tragic, it is stupid).

For me, his early poem "Woman on Tapestry" is powerfully beautiful and demonstrates his gifts and strengths. Or take a look at the vitality and rhythm of "The Countryman's Return" (It opens: "Embracing Low-falutin' London (said the odd man in a country-pot, his hutch in the fields, by a mother-like henrun)". That's pretty good stuff.

The CD with Dylan Thomas' voice is a nice addition because the music is all the more obvious.

Will you like Dylan Thomas?.......2003-12-09

Certainly, if you like poetry at all. Open the book at random and start listening to the sound as you read. OK---in my case, it's fallen open at this:
Shall gods be said to thump the clouds
When clouds are cursed by thunder,
Be said to weep when weather howls?
Shall rainbows be their tunics' colour?
So on one level, this is poetry for mouthing and savouring and enjoying like music. Technically, it's tight as a drum. See how the vowels are juxtaposed and notice the assonance and shape-rhymes at the end of the lines. Then comes the meaning. Dylan Thomas is not the simplest poet to understand, but he always has a strong, strident, moving argument to make that you can't forget, even if you don't agree. This edition includes recordings of the poet reading some of the verses in his strangely old-fashioned, but unforgettable voice. I first met Dylan Thomas's poems when I was 14, at a stormy, angry, poetry-writing age. That's a good moment to encounter a great poet and find out what else can be said and considered and felt. If it's Dylan Thomas, there's a strong chance he'll stay with you for the rest of your life. This is a book to leave around casually for others to find, especially if they're at a stormy, angry, poetry-writing age. If only more of us were, more of the time.

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"Time passes. Listen. Time passes."
starless and bible black & the sunny side of the street
What ?
Something for everybody in Thomas' exquisite singsong dialog
It's a radio play!

Under Milk Wood: A Play for Voices
Dylan Thomas
Manufacturer: New Directions Publishing Corporation
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0811202097

Book Description

“Only your eyes are unclosed to see the black and folded town fast, and slow, asleep”

Completed only a month before Dylan Thomas died, Under Milk Wood is an inspired and irreverent account of life and love in a small coastal village in Wales one spring day. Full of raucous energy and lyrical passion, it is the most complete expression of Thomas' unique perspective on the human condition.

Called “a play for voices” by the author himself, Under Milk Wood premiered in 1953 with Thomas and five American actors reading the parts and was preserved, almost by chance, in this remarkable recording. Here is the author's greatest work rendered as he himself directed, in his own famous voice that captures the lively melodic essence of the work itself.

Featuring Dylan Thomas with Sada Thompson, Nancy Wickwire, Ray Poole, Dion Allen, and Allen F. Collins

This is the only recording ever made with Thomas in the cast, and it owes its existence to the chance thought someone had just before curtain of setting up the little tape recorder that was at hand and laying a microphone on the floor at the center of the stage. Although a studio recording for Caedmon was planned, Thomas did not live to do it. That this recording was not erased or lost or thrown away remains some kind of miracle.

Customer Reviews:

"Time passes. Listen. Time passes.".......2005-06-01

Written as a "play for voices" for the BBC, this work was originally performed in 1954, with Richard Burton as the First Voice, connecting all thirty-three characters--men, women, and small children. Depicting one full day in the life of a small town in Wales, Thomas shows its motley residents as they awaken, perform their daily tasks, socialize and gossip, and daydream about the past that might have been and the future that may yet offer hope. As is always the case with Thomas, the "play" is full of alliteration and various kinds of rhyme, with nouns and adjectives used as verbs to convey action and sense impressions simultaneously. A wry humor and honesty of feeling make the work engaging for the listener/reader and charmingly illustrative of a time and place now gone.

Individual characters come alive through their own voices and through the gossip of others, spread by the postman and by neighbors. When night falls and the residents retire, their additional losses and disappointments, along with their escapes into dreams, are given voice and poignancy. Polly Garter, with her numerous children by numerous fathers, dreams of Willie Weasel, a very small man who was the love of her life. Captain Cat, the blind bell-ringer, thinks of all the sailors he knew who died at sea and Mr. Pugh dreams of poisoning his wife.

Simple songs add to the realism and the sense of character and place. An elegiac song by Polly Garter, as she remembers Willie and compares him to her other lovers, conveys an almost palpable sadness and makes Polly one of the most memorable characters. A humorous singing game by children adds to the realism, and young Gwenny's song to three very young boys is full of cheeky humor. Filled with the hurly-burly of everyday life in a small town in 1950s Wales, this and A Child's Christmas in Wales are among Thomas's most beloved works. Mary Whipple

starless and bible black & the sunny side of the street.......2003-12-02

I was first attracted to Dylan Thomas after studying James Joyce's The Dubliners at high school. I must say that in my opinion Thomas's play/poem makes a surprisingly good film, which is sadly not available thrugh Amazon.com, but to say this play for voices is delightful would be misleading, as this deep study of the underbelly of a small fishing village is about a peculiar kind of nationalism that is both celebratory and critical.

What makes it such a great experience is how the language grabs you, and you have to listen to every word, so it is intense. The narrator begins his description of the sleeping town of Llareggub from Milk Wood, above the town, then enters the cobbled streets to observe and eavesdrop, over a twenty-four hour period, dipping into the thoughts, reminiscences and dreams of the townsfolk.

Since Dylan Thomas died in 1953, and this was one of his last works, the world he describes is fifty years old and seems somewhat quaint today. But his rich language on occasions soars with the romance of feeling for the beauty of his nativeland (the vicar's morning address to the town, with nobody listening, is just wonderful), and love of its people.

Nevertheless, in relating the sexual dreams and fantasies and activities of the town and the world of men and women a touch of gothic intrudes. There are oppositions at play between the open-hearted, sexually generous women and the close-minded wives, the ecstatic Organ Morgan the church organist and his petty shopkeeper wife ("a martyr to music"), the mischievious butcher's subversions, numerous attractions and solicitations between adults and the budding sexuality of the young, the stultified love of Sinbad the barman, and an unscrupulous postman and his nosey-parker wife.And many other endearing characters.

The portrait Thomas paints of the town under Milk Wood is tainted by his own world-view, resentful of the Church, the lack of ambition and other provincialities. There's an amazing amount of activity in the town, apart from its economy, lots of drinking, sexuality and folksong, but despite the evidence of bad-blood the community seems to thrive on love and an underlying generosity of heart that allows for the bounty that all life brings.

These days I'm not a great lover of poetry, and that's what this play for voices is, but Under Milk Wood still works for me.

What ?.......2001-12-06

While I'm a long time fan of Dylan Thomas's prose and poetry, I've never understood the fascination with this sloppy, non-sensical play.

It is, to me, a moment when Thomas stopped being Thomas and made a clumsy attempt to emulate James Joyce. The result is a confusing and pointless play.

That said, the man was a marvel. Read his poetry, read "Adventures In The Skin Trade" and "Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Dog."

Something for everybody in Thomas' exquisite singsong dialog.......2001-09-20

I saw this play at the UW Drama School this spring, and it was by far the best play I'd seen all year -- so I ran right out and bought the hard copy to read. Could not put it down: and I just loved being swept away in the rhythmic current of Thomas' playful, wonderful river of speech. Satire and songs, cruelty and flirtation, dreams and ghosts, stirring eroticism and sweetness fertilize the highly alliterative and sensual text. The whole delightful, unforgettable short play makes a small Welsh fishing village seem like a living organism, where even the ground shifts and swells with the unspoken will of the long-dead and the presence of sea-captains now only legends. Get it on tape, if at all possible!

It's a radio play!.......2001-08-27

This is probably the greatest play ever written for RADIO! It's a medium rarely thought of for such things today, and theater people repeatedly come a cropper in trying to put it on the stage. I've seen several stage productions and one TV version, and the piece simply does not work that way. Dylan Thomas takes the LISTENER inside the characters' dreams and thoughts. Once they are concretized or thingified on a stage or screen, they are destroyed. Don't read it. Close your eyes and LISTEN. It's magnificent - funny, sweet, moving.

Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas 1934-1952 (New Directions Book)

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In the beginning was the mounting fire.
Shockingly Admitted, I Don't Like Thomas
The music of a master maker
Wonderful Collection
Dylan Thomas as he wanted to be remembered

Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas 1934-1952 (New Directions Book)
Dylan Thomas
Manufacturer: New Directions Publishing Corporation
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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The Collected Stories (New Directions Paperbook)
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ASIN: 0811202054

Amazon.com

Dylan Thomas's poems gambol and frisk across the tongue and imagination like those of few poets I have ever read. His choicely crafted (and often synaesthetic) phrases, his musicality, and his laughingly lilting language are nicely captured by the first two stanzas of Fern Hill--read it aloud for full effect:

<BLOCKQUOTE> Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green, The night above the dingle starry, Time let me hail and climb Golden in the heydays of his eyes, And honored among wagons I was prince of the apple towns, And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves Trail with daisies and barley Down the rivers of the windfall light.

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home, In the sun that is young once only, Time let me play and be Golden in the mercy of his means, And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold, And the sabbath rang slowly In the pebbles of the holy streams... </BLOCKQUOTE>

This collection of his poems contains only those pieces he wished preserved and should be owned by anyone who loves beautifully crafted language.

Customer Reviews:

In the beginning was the mounting fire........2007-01-03

Dylan Thomas - Collected Poems is a brief book. It contains poems which, according to a short introductory note by Thomas, he considered important works in his career as a poet. The poems span Thomas' career from 1934-1952 and include those for which he is best known - "Do not go gentle into that good night", "And death shall have no dominion", and "After the funeral". The poems were selected by Thomas in 1952, one year before his untimely death.

The collection starts with a prologue in verse, a lyrical piece filled with beautiful natural imagery. While much of the poetry in the book deals with death and the persistence of life in unflinching terms, the beauty of Wales and its countryside seeps through in many of Thomas' poems. His poetry, in blank verse, draws on natural imagery, train-of-consciousness techniques and unusual metaphors to paint a picture, or rather, give vague substance to an idea or feeling without providing clear definition. It is only occasionally, as in "The hand that signed the paper", or "This bread I break" that his meaning is clear and easy to follow. These poems are not for the lazy mind to enjoy on a summer's day. They are challenging both mentally and emotionally. Apparently, Thomas held an immortalist view of life and believed in the perseverance of the human spirit but he seems, in these poems, to be struggling with the idea of death. He's probably not the best poet to read when depressed. If you are expecting a set of poems along the lines of "A child's Christmas in Wales" you may be disappointed with this. Occasional flashes of romantic lyricism shine in poems such as "A poem in October" or "Fern Hill" but the tone is mostly somber.

If I have a quibble with this book it is not with the poetry but with the edition. The book is entirely bare of any explanatory notes, footnotes, or references. There is a brief (one paragraph) note by the author at the start and a longer note by Vernon Watkins at the end describing the incomplete state of "Elegy" but nothing at all in between. While this allows one to enjoy the poetry in its raw state, Thomas's metaphors are often unusual to the point of inscrutability. Some background and definition of obscure and Welsh terms would seem necessary for full enjoyment of the poems. If you really want to understand Thomas' work you will be forced to do further research. If you just want to let the poetry wash over you then this is a great book by a truly great poet.

Shockingly Admitted, I Don't Like Thomas.......2005-10-21

If you're into this Welsh bard's poems, then this is the collection for you, because durn near everything is in here, but after a decade of trying, I'll admit, I can't make up from down in these poems, and I can read almost anything.

The music of a master maker .......2004-11-09

There are great lines and even great poems in the work of Dylan Thomas. "Do not go gentle into that good night, Rage rage against the dying of the light" " And Death Shall have no Dominion" Into the Zion of the water- bead and the synagogue of the ear of corn" And there is a music and power in his poems unsurpassed, especially when he is reading them. His life in a sense conformed to the image of a romantic poet, wild and raging and dissolute and self- destructive . He drank himself to death. And yet in his short life he managed to produce a handful of poems which are present in almost every anthology of modern poetry, canonical poems of great power and beauty.

Wonderful Collection.......2004-05-05

This collection showcases Thomas' best work. I am always amazed by how few people know nothing by Thomas but "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" If you are interested in fabulous poetry filled with mystery and beauty this is a wonderful book to start with.

Dylan Thomas as he wanted to be remembered.......2004-03-18

The question is, do you get this book for cheap, or the brand new POEMS OF DYLAN THOMAS [WITH CD] for not cheap. That depends on your wallet and your love of Thomas.

If you are new to Thomas, perhaps coming here intrigued after reading the often-anthologized "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night," I heartily recommend this book. These are all the poems Thomas wanted to live on in his name. They are excellent across the board, with a lot that I personally really loved. Thomas in some ways reminds me of Auden or Yeats (or even Blake) in terms of his mysticism and commitment to sound and form. I also think of Poe, who is often criticized by literary types, but much loved by the general public. There's a reason Thomas is popular. Even his most fantastical lines have a way of resonating. Many are unforgettable:

"Your mouth, my love, the thistle in the kiss?"

Book Description

First recorded in February of 1952, this remastered recording of Dylan Thomas reading his A Child's Christmas in Wales recalls all of the sights, smells, and sounds of a long-ago-Christmas.

Thomas's wonderful recollection of this holiday in the seaside town of his youth is captured in this vivid performance. Also included are five other selected poems read by Dylan Thomas, including his well-known Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.

Whether sharing his wistful memory of a holiday spent with people long past, or addressing the perennial problem of our mortality, Thomas gives us great pleasure in our personal and common memories while affirming life with a resounding "Yes!"

Contents:
A Child's Christmas in Wales
And five poems: Fern Hill; Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night; In The White Giant's Thigh; Balad of the Long-Legged Bait; Ceremony After a Fire Raid

Customer Reviews:

A Christmas Tradition.......2007-01-10

This reading of A Child's Christmas in Wales is tops! It wouldn't be Christmas for us without hearing Dylan Thomas tell his story. He recounts a holiday of simple, family and neighborhood doings, and paints a picture of snowy, seaside Wales of the 1920's.

from a little bit of Wales comes universally human warmth..........2007-01-05

I love this story, as do all my children, who, from their earliest years, have not much struggled with the density of the language nor the scatteredness of the story. 5 of my 8 great-grandparents are from Wales, and the remaining 3 have the blood in them as well, so maybe it is like drinking water for us.:-D Our minds are all scattered, and words, even English words ;-D, fall on us in clumps....which makes it doubly hard to keep a clean house. LOL

The sort of prose-poetry imaginative way of seeing and describing the world unique to Welshwomen and Welshmen and Welshchildren, which does not seek to keep up the pretense that history can be separated from myth, story and desire, and which requires loving with eyes wide open to [and eventually embracing] one's own and others' bumps, bruises and idiosyncracies included, is extraordinarily well represented here. So, by the way, is speaking and listening to the close and Holy darkness!

My favorite version isthe one illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman. To me she has captured the complexity of the Welsh personality best, though i have nothing to say against the other illustrators praised in these reviews. I DO have a warning for you: there are some skinny versions flying about which do not have the poem-story complete and correct. This sort of work cannot suffer removal or modification, IMHO.

gbg

The voice.......2006-03-24

If you have read A Child's Christmas in Wales, you know that it has to be a classic. But you can't fully appreciate it until you have heard Dylan Thomas read it. What a deep, expressive, poetic voice. For years, I have listened to the recording on a Caedman record. It is wonderful to have it on a CD.

a treasure.......2005-12-28

For me, "A Child's Christmas in Wales" is the single most beautiful piece of Christmas literature in the English language.
And once you hear the author himself reading it, you will be forever enchanted. Dylan Thomas' deep humanity is expressed in every word, and in the spaces between them, in this masterpiece.

DB

It does not go gentle into that good night........2005-09-25

Like so many other children's books, Amazon.com takes a perverse pleasure in lumping together all version's of Dylan Thomas's, "A Child's Christmas In Wales". So if a reviewer, like myself, wants to review the book that was illustrated in 2004 by Chris Raschka, I'd better make it as clear as possible right from the start. So here it goes. Ahem. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, it gives me the greatest of pleasure to announce that I will now be reviewing "A Child's Christmas In Wales", penned by the great Dylan Thomas and illustrated with grace, aplomb, and a hint of frenzy by accomplished children's book illustrator Chris Raschka. Thank you.

If you, like myself, have gone most of your natural life in ignorance of this story, I'll try to summarize it here. Problem is, summarizing "A Child's Christmas In Wales" is akin to herding cats. This isn't one of those books with a neat little beginning, middle, and end. There's not what you might call "a plot". If the book is ever summarized anywhere it's simply stated that this is Thomas's reminisces of Christmas when he was a child. In doing so, the poet fills this relatively short work with patches of memory, amazing descriptions, and evocative sentences like, "The wind through the trees made noises as of old and unpleasant and maybe webfooted men wheezing in caves". If you're looking for a straightforward Christmas tale with characters, a plot, and a point, go get yourself a copy of "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever" and enjoy it. If, on the other hand, you would like to begin a tradition in your family of reading aloud this magnificent and truly beautiful collection of evocative images, this the only place to go.

There is no tradition in my family of listening or reading this story during the holiday time of year. In fact, prior to reading this book with Raschka's illustrations, I had never even heard so much as a phrase from it. Basically I came to this book as a clean slate. I was just a former college English major with some mild associations with Dylan but certainly no baggage of any kind. Not knowing the history behind the book, I was under the vague and misguided belief that Dylan had written this tale with the full intent that it be a children's book. Not so much. According to the helpful Foreward at the beginning of this tale, I learned that this book was actually a combination of two separate pieces produced during Thomas's lifetime and put together after. So this isn't like when Michael Chabon or Joyce Carol Oates writes a children's book. More like when Woody Guthrie songs are turned into picture books. A posthumous and lucrative printing.

For the child that has never heard this story read before, I found that Raschka was a perfect fit. Certainly I understand that the book has, in the past, been illustrated by the great Trina Schart Hyman. Hyman, however, is a very literal illustrator. She's excellent at realism and intricate characters, but how well does that work when she's paired with Mr. Thomas? This is a book that contains lines like, "All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged, fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in the snow and bring out whatever I can find". Hyman doesn't even bother to deal with sentences like that one. Raschka is another matter entirely. Using a gouache, ink, and torn paper technique, the man who brought the world the manic, "John Coltrane's Giant Steps" has finally met his authorial match. The sentence I just wrote above is accompanied by a snowblown seaside town, so filled with cresting waves and freezing snow that you shiver just looking at it. These are pictures that work on the reader's emotions. I have all the respect in the world for Hyman or even Edward Ardizzone, but as accomplished as they are, they're not the right fit. Raschka is.

I was a little baffled by the blurb on the cover of this version of the tale that read, "This beautifully illustrated edition should bring Dylan Thomas's work to a new generation of children" - President Jimmy Carter. I'm a Carter fan myself, but even I can't see what this perfectly nice former president has to do with poetry, children's literature, or even Christmas itself. It might have been better to put a blurb by the Number 1 poet in America. Problem is, who is that person? And would anyone buy a book if they recommended it? These problems aside, it's wonderful for me to hold this book in my hands and know that at long last a great problem has been corrected. Thomas's book has existed for years without proper packaging. Raschka single-handedly has corrected this problem and the world is a better place for it. So thank you, Mr. Raschka. Thank you.

A Child's Christmas in Wales (Godine Storyteller)

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More than a Christmas story.

A Child's Christmas in Wales (Godine Storyteller)
Dylan Thomas
Manufacturer: David R. Godine Publisher
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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A Child's Christmas in Wales
A Child's Christmas in Wales
A Christmas Memory
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog
Under Milk Wood: A Play for Voices

ASIN: 0879233397

Customer Reviews:

More than a Christmas story........1997-10-22

Scaring sleeping uncles by popping balloons. Getting a hatchet by mistake. Snowballing cats. Dylan Thomas has captured the perfect Christmas. Without any moral, very little plot, and a concern only for the child's perspective, this little piece sticks in my mind better than any other Christmas story I've ever read. Between drunk Auntie Hannah singing in the backyard and the haunted house down the streets where a group of mischievous carollers get the living hell scared out of them, "A Child's Christmas in Wales" is everything Christmas should be: funny, happy, poignant, a little sad, and fattening. Keep a bowl of candy nearby when you read it.

Selected Poems 1934-1952, New Revised Edition

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the Walt Whitman of Wales
Words Well Written
Dylan's greatness as a poet A power of feeling and music all his own

Selected Poems 1934-1952, New Revised Edition
Dylan Thomas
Manufacturer: New Directions Publishing Corporation
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

The Collected Stories (New Directions Paperbook)
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog
Dylan Thomas:The Caedmon CD Collection
The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats
Dylan Thomas: A New Life

ASIN: 0811215423

Book Description

A classic New Directions book—revised for the 21st Century.

Dylan Thomas (1914-1953) prepared this volume in 1952—the author's choice of the ninety poems he felt would best represent his work up to that time—and it was published by New Directions in 1953 as The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas, shortly after his death. This book was then and remained, for all practical purposes, Thomas's "collected" poems and in that sense complete. However, with the 1971 publication of the 192 poems in The Poems of Dylan Thomas (also now available in a revised edition), Thomas's Collected Poems has naturally evolved to become Thomas's Selected Poems.

Thomas wrote his last poem, "Prologue," especially to begin this collection, and addressed it to "my readers, the strangers." Two unfinished poems are included in this edition: "Elegy," prepared by Vernon Watkins, and "In Country Heaven," prepared by Daniel Jones—both Welsh poets were life-long friends of Dylan Thomas. Textual corrections discovered over the course of forty years have now been incorporated, and a complete index of titles and first lines, as well as a brief chronology of the author's life, have been added.

As it has for half a century, this book includes the best of Dylan Thomas's poetry—"Light Breaks Where No Sun Shines," "The Force that Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower," "And Death Shall Have No Dominion," "Poem in October," "Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night," "The Hunchback in the Park," "In My Craft or Sullen Art," "In Country Sleep," and Thomas's poignant reflection on his youth, "Fern Hill."

Customer Reviews:

the Walt Whitman of Wales.......2006-08-15

Dylan Thomas takes free verse into the next level (and regular verse into the next universe "Do not go Gentle into that Good Night")

Dylan Thomas is one of the last of the great poets after W. B. Yeats.

Dylan Thomas reigns forever.

Words Well Written.......2005-12-26

Dylan Thomas creates poems that are great to speak and use words that are truly magically placed. In my opinion, his books are the best for this type of poetry, so the person who purchases this book will likely find themselves reading these, even if only to themselves, out loud. My copy of this book was published in the 1950s, however I hope to buy this paperback version to carry with me.

Dylan's greatness as a poet A power of feeling and music all his own.......2005-12-15

The greatness of Dylan Thomas is in his music and voice, a powerful rolling seasound. It is too in that whole mysteriously rich vocabulary, that unique diction of his own a diction which like that of Hopkins , and Dickinson seems to strike us as wholly original.
The greatness of Thomas is too in his human feeling. "Do not go gentle into that dark night, Rage Rage Against the Dying of the Light".
He stuns us startles and surprises us with lines of incredible beauty.

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Annoyingly? Who Goofed?
Prose poems perhaps
Dylan Thomas Stories reviewed by Greg Kaiser aka agkaiser

Collected Stories
Dylan Thomas
Manufacturer: Phoenix (an Imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd )
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

British | Short Stories | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Short Stories | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

The Poems of Dylan Thomas, New Revised Edition [with CD]
Selected Poems 1934-1952, New Revised Edition
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog
Under Milk Wood: A Play for Voices
Dylan Thomas: A New Life

ASIN: 0753810484

Book Description

This unique edition presents the complete span of Thomas's short stories, from his urgent hallucinatory visions of the dark forces beneath the surface of Welsh life to the inimitable comedy of his later autobiographical writings. With PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG DOG and ADVENTURES IN THE SKIN TRADE, Thomas found a new voice for his irreverent memories of lust and bravado in south-west Wales and London, leading to a sequence of classic evocations of childhood magic and the follies of adult life.

Customer Reviews:

Annoyingly? Who Goofed?.......2003-04-23

"Annoyingly" this page is devoted to the stories of Dylan Thomas; also"annoyingly", both the Publishers Weekly review as well as that of a disgrunted reader refer stories by Leslie Norris; Norris' book may be splendid; I don't know; I have read Dylan's stories and honor and love them (they are live things wearing incandescent prose -- believe me); perhaps Amazon could reassign the aforementioned reviews and those of us who -- on this page at least -- have (happily) written about the appropriate book will be left to bask unannoyed.

Prose poems perhaps.......2000-10-19

Was Dylan thomas the consummate craftsman? Indeed, he was; and took real delight in his gifts and his exercise of them; he was a Celtic bard in the truest sense of that role -- the lonely public/private man who carried within him the lyric history of his race, the love of his language and a very vocal sense of wonder over his role in life; that he had song, yes; that he was funny, loud, boisterous, cautious, selfish, rude, unforgettable -- all of that and more; he was the poet's poet and the singer for those who longed for lost boyhood, who raged at death and who marvelled at the all the world's words rediscovered in a dewdrop; his stories, like his poems, should be read aloud; there is an incantatory quality to them -- as if something profoundly old and grandfatherly were suddenly shared with the reader; Thomas himself was a great reader; to hear him is to savor him at his best and to feel deeply and sweetly the majesty and holy compulsion of our mother tongue; the stories, while less charged than the poems, nonetheless captivate and break into a kind of lyricism that gladdens the heart and restores the ear. If he wasn't the best of our poets, he was easily the most tuneful and spoke from a very deep place that only the purest of us can truly know.

Dylan Thomas Stories reviewed by Greg Kaiser aka agkaiser.......1998-06-19

With significant exceptions, "The Collected Stories" chronical the life, if read in that order, of a sad and melancholy man, who was aware of but unwilling to accept the burden on consciousness of the futility of modern life. Thomas lightened his load, by and by, with increasingly frequent jokes and essays into humour. In many ways the stories are an accurate account of the everyday absurdity of Everyman; by one who lived at the time personality was displaced by the development of commercial media hype. Thomas died at age 39 in 1953. If he'd lived a few more years he might have described to us the age of common emotion and undifferentiated humanity, which breaks down only under the influence of alcohol to anything interesting and never unique; that he interpolated and prophecied from his eavesdropping into the lives of his comtemporaries. (No, I don't think that sentence is too long and I think Dylan would have approved.) He didn't spare himself from his snooping. Much of the content is autobiographical. But like a reporter, he just tells us the facts. The inferences and insights are your own. You have to read this volume! END

The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas: A New Directions Book

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The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas: A New Directions Book
Dylan Thomas
Manufacturer: New Directions Publishing Corporation
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Product Description

This is the definitive edition of Dylan Thomas's poetry, containing all of the poems which he himself wished to perserve. The poet made his selection in 1952, the year before his death, and wrote especially for it the beautiful "Author's Prologue," addressed to "my readers, the strangers." In 1956, the collection was augmented by the addition of the poem "Elegy," for which sixty pages of manuscript lines were found in Thomas's papers after his death, and which was edited by his friend, the poet Vernon Watkins. Those lines were written in memory of the poet's father, but they speak to us also, in image and feeling, of Dylan Thomas himself. Published gy New Directions, 1957 revised reprint of the 1953 edition. Library of Congress Number: 53-7766 Red polished cloth boards, 223 pp, with dust jacket. Frontpiece photo by Marion Morehouse.

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Delicious Dylan Thomas

The Dylan Thomas Omnibus
Dylan Thomas
Manufacturer: Phoenix (an Imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd )
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Book Description

'In the beginning was the three-pointed star, One smile of light across the empty face; One bough of bone across the rooting air, The substance forked that marrowed the first sun; And, burning cophers on the round of space, Heaven and hell mixed as they spun.' This is a rich collection of Dylan Thomas's best-loved poems and stories, as well as pieces he wrote for radio and magazines. The selection spans Thomas's writing lifetime, and it shows the full range of this tempestuous and meticulous artist who once cheerfully claimed that he had beast, angel and madman within him.

Customer Reviews:

Delicious Dylan Thomas.......2002-09-29

From the glorious cover photograph of the pensive bard to the last word of poet, prose writer and playwright Dylan Thomas' "Under Milkwood" this is a volume most fine! The soft cover edition even has a milky patina to it, as much a pleasure to hold as the words inside are to read.
All the famous poems are here: "If I were tickled by the rub of love", "And death shall have no dominion", "Fern Hill" and everything else. This is an omnibus, after all. The short stories are almost as intense as the poems. Also included are transcriptions of some of his broadcasts. And here a suggestion, get the associated recordings to round out your Dylan Thomas experience for his voice was a wonder. He had been a radio broadcaster and on tour he was an unforgettable reader and the best interpreter of his own work there has ever been.
There is also a timeline of his career. The brief biography could be longer but that is being picky for who doesn't know his life was tragically far too short. His oeuvre speaks for itself. He was the greatest meddler of words since Shakespeare. Thomas' work will be read as long as English is spoken and this volume will be cherished by anyone who loves our language, for a lifetime.

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