The Poet's Craft

Thomas saw the workings of biology as a magical transformation producing unity out of diversity, and again and again in his poetry he sought a poetic ritual to celebrate this unity ("The force that through the green fuse drives the flower / Drives my green age"). He saw men and women locked in a round of identities, with the beginning of growth also the first movement toward death; the beginning of love leading to procreation, new growth, and so in turn to death and life again. Because of this view he comforted himself with the unity of humankind and nature, of past and present, of life and death, and so "refused to mourn the death of a child." In his best poems the closely woven imagery (deriving from the Bible, Welsh folklore and preaching, and Freud) is organized to present aspects of this theme.

His more open-worked poems of reminiscence and autobiographical emotion, such as "Poem in October," communicate more immediately to the reader through their fine lyrical feeling and compelling use of simple natural images. His autobiographical work Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog (1940) and his radio play Under Milk Wood (1952, first broadcast 1954) reveal a vividness of observation and a combination of violence and tenderness in expression that show he could handle prose as excitingly as verse.