Online edition of Daily News

Why do great poets die young? If Dylan Thomas was asked this question he may have said because their heads explode in ideas and perhaps get to drinking to get over with it. A heavy drinker who more than often confessed that he was at his peak when drunk to create the works he wrote. What Shakespeare is to England, Thomas is to Wales.

The bay as it is now, a hive of tourist activity with over thousand of motor boats and fishing boats. The biggest bridge in South Wales, spans the Bay.

One of the greatest English poets of the past century, Thomas died at 39 at a time when other poets were struggling to gain recognition. He was born on 27th October, 1914 in Swansea, South Wales and entered Swansea Grammar School where his father was a senior English master. Like Shakespeare, he never had a formal academic career to become such an acclaimed poet in 1931 because he left school in 1931 to become a reporter in the South Wales Evening Post and not before (in 1930) when he started the famous Notebooks to which his early poems were copied and continued to April 1934. His first poem was published in London in the English weekly under the title of And Death Shall Have No Dominian during his first visit to London.

A young Dylan Thomas overlooks the bay as it was. It was at this sight that many of his works dawned into reality. Thomas died at thirty nine years of age.

On 22nd April 1934, Thomas won the Book Prize on the Poet's Corner from his first collection of poems. He visited London many times and later moved over to the city to publish 'The 18 Poems' where he met Caitin Macnamara whom he married in 1937. The same year, Thomas made his first broadcast with Life And Modern Poet. From then Thomas became a celebrity moving from Swansea to London and to many more capital cities. Eventually he made many trips abroad which included Italy, Iran and Prague as the guest of the Czechoslovak Government. He visited America thrice and made a deep impression each time.

Under habitual influence of liquor, Thomas wrote furiously and with passion and remains to date with the largest number of published poems. He smoked heavily in between which may have accounted for his early death on 9th November, 1953.

Thomas had two sons, Llewelyn born in Hampshire on March 30th, 1939 and Colm born on 24th July, 1949. Aerenwy his only daughter was born on 3rd March, 1943. None of his children inherited their famous father's writing skills.

Dylan Thomas Centre in Swansea where thousands of locals and foreign tourists visit like at Stratford-Upon-Avon.

Living partly in Swansea and London, Thomas continued his broadcasting to eager public. In September 1940, Thomas began to work as a script writer for films with the Strand Film Company. In 1948, he moved over to Oxfordshire to write feature films for Gainsborough. In May 1949, Thomas became home-sick and moved back to his grassroots at Laugherne which was known as the Boat House.

Between 1952 and 53 he made three visits to America during which period his father died. The impact was so great that it had great impact on his writing that saw a change in the style. On 14th May he had his first performance with Under Milk Wood in New York. On this same day, his first film script, The Doctor And The Devils was published.

It is home sweet home for Dylan’s beloved Boat House, still preserved as it was.

In October 1953, he left for his final tour of America and on 9th November which was one month later, he died at St. Vincent's Hospital, New York City after a brilliant and illustrious career as a poet.

Like Shakespeare who during his time came under severe criticism due to the language used without a formal education, Thomas suffered the same fate not because of his academic shortcoming but for the rhyme used in his stanzas for other reasons which they felt surfaced because of intoxication. Their treatment of his victory was the tone rather than demonstration. They said he lacked rhyme and reason. Thomas was good they thought but when it came to expression they sought a need to understand the fulsome praise of poetry.

Thomas's most strident opponents sought to ignore the basic literary criticism as to its law and fundamental rights. They were more than once unfair by him. Yet, they led to a deal of compensating.

Robert Grave was very strong about Thomas's poetic victory and expressed simply it made no sense. Thomas ignored all remarks and perused on his magnificent career in spite of them assuming that the principles applied in their excellent treatment fell short of classical poems and elaborated the volumes in the gaps of what were considered scrappy and insulting treatment towards contemporary poetry as a whole.

Thomas was recognised only a pass-over by the scrutineers who spared only a glance over his work. Donald Davis in Articulate Energy published in 1955 accused him as 'pseudo synex' and an imposter while still later accused him as psychologically damaged source. While being very passionate about their attacks, they were yet joined by another called Geoffrey Grigson who as the Editor of New Verse considered him as an authority and of real discrimination. Grigson who applied his criticism in principle to showcase Dylan Thomas, accused him of half-rhymes and rhymes of poetry's central concern with the human body. From Thomas's work, he drew the substance to his own stanzas from which he made the platform to crush many a poet as well as Thomas.

It was a trap he laid in order to make many a poet blush with embarrassment. Grigson was damaging and misquoting but let us as admirers of Thomas's poems consider the claim of deceit designed to undermine the poet. So, the obvious for me is to quote a genuine verse from Thomas's poems to destroy Grigson's cynical mockery.

How many of us would pause to wonder why critics were so harsh and unkind to him? Was it because Thomas so brilliantly crashed into English poetry emerging as the Welshman he was.

At the back of their minds did they visualise how a youngster from Swansea would sweep aside their poetry predecessors of academic achievements? They had the nagging fear that under these very circumstances, Shakespeare emerged to be the world's best loved writer. The time had to wait for more recognition of his work outside England and Wales. They feared that in the next half century Thomas would enjoy esteem over most of the classical poets of the past.

It is not everyone who can read Dylan Thomas's poems at a glance. He is devoid of romance, youth and for that matter, nature. They are deep rooted and from contradictory heritage from which the movement poets sought inspiration. Confronted by his work for the new reader who will find a haze in motion, the writing will merge to a refreshing freedom that comes with greater distance. I found myself in this situation when I was introduced to his work by a literary friend. Thomas had the capacity to drive intensity to his work and one might have the option to regulate his work before digesting.

Undoubtly Thomas was sharp-minded among the new generation of poets and presently he had no peer to compete with other than those nasty critics. He blasted their ground of severe attacks with the partiality bestowed on him with cruel and calculating assaults. He was determined to show how wrong they were but he was not possessed with the idea because he was sure time will prove his worth and the reader will acclaim and restore his glory.

Readers at the beginning found a concept such as fruitfulness and aridity before they could resolve to conceive the substance in his poems. It is clearly visual that Thomas never drew inspiration from any writer or poet because his early work bears his distinct signature and a new twist in poetry as never seen before in the texts of English poetry. So, he remains the powerful, disreputable poet not to be patronised. Gabrial Pearson wrote on Thomas 20 years ago that need to be praised for its judiciousness simply writing off all critics who generated bitterness that turned him to a drunk.

That is something I discovered when I stormed through his mountain of poems stored at his Museum in Swansea overlooking the vast lake in memoriam to his Boat House and across the square where his monument sits. Today the lake is expanded by proportions unimaginable with bridges spanning across and thousands of tourist boats as well as fishing boats anchored in the morning sunlight.