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)
‘They Shut Me up in Prose’, whilst not one of Emily Dickinson’s best-known poems – it certainly isn’t up there with ‘I’m Nobody! Who are you?’, ‘Hope is the thing with feathers’, or ‘A narrow Fellow in the Grass’ – is nevertheless sometimes anthologised, and occasionally quoted for its suggestive opening line.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘When in the chronicle of wasted time’ is one of the more famous poems in Shakespeare’s cycle of 154 sonnets. In the sonnet, Shakespeare addresses the Fair Youth, a young fair-haired man, and praises his beauty, arguing that the Youth is more beautiful than anyone who has lived before him.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
The American poet Maggie Smith (born 1977) has become one of the most popular and most widely read contemporary poets, thanks to her poetry being shared on social media and elsewhere online. Her easy, conversational mode of address makes us feel as if we are being ushered into her confidence, but this colloquial style masks the artfulness of Smith’s verse, which is highly controlled and structured.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Dust of Snow’ is a poem by the American poet Robert Frost (1874-1963), originally published as ‘A Favour’ in the London Mercury before being reprinted in Yale Review as ‘Snow Dust’. It was then collected in Frost’s 1923 book of poems, New Hampshire.