Dylan Thomas

“Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” Mrs. SkotnickiApril 4, 2013

Biography

"He seems to have reserved all of his faculties for his poetry and to have conducted his life

as an afterthought.”-Jacob Korg

The Early Years

• Born April 27, 1914• Swansea, Wales, UK• Father taught high

school English• Neglected all studies

but English• Left school at 16 after

dismal examination results (Korg 1) http://images.marinas.com/med_res_id/82038

Poetry Notebooks

• Thomas wrote drafts of many of his most famous poems when he was a young adult, between ages 15-19.

• Notebooks are now housed in the Poetry Collection at Lockwood Library (Korg 2) .

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The Young Poet

• Described by his contemporaries as "slight, curly-haired, shy provincial, an excellent tapside mimic and wit, [Thomas] was often seen in pubs working over exercise books of his poems, with a glass of beer beside him" (Korg 4).

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Early Genius

• Thomas’s later poems were more polished and complex, and "compassionate," but "can only be regarded as extensions of the highly original poetic idiom he fashioned when, as a school-boy and as a loose-ends juvenile reporter, he neglected his duties in order to twist his private discoveries of the paradoxes of existence into arcane, eccentric, and highly organized verse.” (Korg 3)

Caitlin McNamara

• Met in London pub in 1936

• Married, penniless, in 1937

• The poet struggled financially for the rest of his life

• Dependent upon friends and family for support (Korg 7)

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BBC Radio

• Began radio work for British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in 1937

• Critics debate the effect the job had on poetry though some of his best work was published during this period (Korg 10)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/arts/sites/dylan-thomas/images/dylan-thomas-bbc_01_446.jpg

The Boat House

• Laugharne, Wales• First visited in 1937

• Returned between work for BBC in London

• Eventually purchased for Dylan and Caitlin by his benefactor, Margaret Taylor in 1949 (Korg 8-11)

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Thomas’s Study

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Each poem is the result of months and even years of work. For example, Thomas composed over 200 drafts of the poem "Fern Hill" (Korg 6).

Systematic Verse

• At first glance Thomas's poems are incomprehensible, "But it has since become clear that each of his poems is an exhaustively calculated construction" (Korg 6).

• Thomas would begin construction of a poem with a phrase he found suggestive, "and then added to it through links of sound, imagery, and association" (Korg 6).

• Thomas knew from the outset the place the "suggestive phrase" would occupy in the finished poem (Korg 6).

Poem Analysis

“Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night”

“Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night”

• Extended metaphor: Do not go gentle into that good night

• Diction that establishes and reinforces light/dark imagery

• Rhyme scheme and form (villanelle) that keeps emotion tightly in check

• Sound to sense: rhyme scheme reinforces meaning and theme

Works Cited

• Korg, Jacob. Dylan Thomas, Updated ed. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1992. Twayne's English Authors Series 20. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 4 Apr. 2013.

• Thomas, Dylan. The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas. New York: New Directions, 1957. Print.