Poetry · A way to begin
Collected Poems 1934–1952
Dylan Thomas · 1952
Synopsis
Ninety poems that the author himself selected, from the first collections to the pieces written after the war, opened by a prologue in verse. A nineteen-year-old boy hears the same force drive the flower and destroy him; a child killed by fire in a London air raid receives a poem that refuses to be an elegy; childhood stays on a Welsh farm return. The language is dense, sonorous, made to be spoken.
Context
The volume appeared on 10 November 1952, a year before the death of its author, who established it himself: he included the poems of his three earlier collections, except one, and six poems written after 1946. In August 1952 he wrote to open it a prologue addressed to his readers, “the strangers”, and added a note saying that the book contained all the poems he wished to keep. The excluded piece was withdrawn when the book was already in proofs. That same year, he had recorded for a young New York publisher a disc of readings, the first from that house, which sold four hundred thousand copies in 1960.
Who it is for
Nearly two hundred pages in English; in French, the complete poetic work only appeared in 2024 and 2025, in a bilingual edition.
Prizes and reception
The collection received the Foyle Poetry Prize, and Philip Toynbee hailed its author as the greatest living poet in the English language.
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