18 Poems

Abstract

T.S. Eliot’s comment that genuine poetry often communicates before it is understood is certainly true of Dylan Thomas’s verse; and similarly the baffled astonishment that greeted ‘The Waste Land’ was not unlike the reception of 18 Poems, different though their impact and message were. ‘Take breath and read it with the ears, as I always wish to be read’ Hopkins advised Bridges ‘and my verse becomes alright.’ It is advice very similar to Dylan Thomas’s injunction ‘All I know is that it is memorable words-in-cadence which move and excite me emotionally. And, once you’ve got the hang of it, it should always be better when read aloud than when read silently with the eyes. Always.’¹ Such recommendations are apt for all Thomas’s poetry, but particularly appropriate to 18 Poems, for that close-knit rhythmic structure, their bardic tone of utterance, often prompted by biblical rhythms, and their elaborate sound patterns provide surer keys to their meaning than following the usual syntactical paths of poetry. This is because meaning in a poem by Thomas is compounded as much in the emotional and sensory impact as in the intellectual or conceptual import. Indeed, the ideas that inform Thomas’s early, as his later verse, are few and relatively simple; what is original and striking is their enactment in image and sound structure.