Where Have the Old Words Got Me?

Book excerpt: Although Dylan Thomas is the one of the most well-known poets of the twentieth century, much of his poetry is considered obscure and difficult, and readers and critics tend to concentrate on those poems that can be most easily understood. Not since the early sixties has there been an attempt to explicate the full corpus of Dylan Thomas's Collected Poems. In Where Have the Old Words Got Me? Ralph Maud tackles Thomas's entire work, giving special attention to more difficult and obscure poems. He makes valuable use of Thomas's letters as edited by Paul Ferris in his authoritative Collected Letters volume, bringing the whole man and his work into view.