By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
The Welsh poet Dylan Thomas (1914-53) was a fascinating man and poet, and his poetry remains much-loved and widely read around the world. But which are his very best poems? In this post, we’ve endeavoured to choose Dylan Thomas’s ten finest poems which we think everyone should read.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night’ is probably the best-known villanelle in English poetry. If you’re not sure what a villanelle is, don’t worry – it’s not important right now. But it’s one reason why the poem is worth reading. The other is that ‘Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night’ is one of Dylan Thomas’s most famous, and finest, poems. You can read it here. What follows constitutes our analysis of this poem of brave defiance in the face of certain death.
Interesting facts about the life and work of Dylan Thomas 1. Dylan Thomas was born in Dylan Marlais Thomas, in Swansea, in 1914. His middle name was Marlais, which was a nod to his great-uncle, William Thomas, who was also a poet. William Thomas’s bardic name was Gwilym Marles. 2. One of Thomas’s first published poems was … Read more