R.E. Slater - Retelling the Story of Young Men and Fire (a short story and poems)

Retelling the Story

of Young Men and Fire

by R.E. Slater

Now we enter into a different kind of world, a world of slow time that accompanies grief and personal sorrow upon an inaccessible mountain marked by concrete stations of the cross. It is all that remains from the many erosions of wintry rains, snowy melts, and the slippery slides that have washed away the lonely ashes of Mann Gulch’s fiery deaths on a late summer's afternoon 0n August 5, 1949. What dramatic, devastating forces coincided to make the best of our young men as solitary, ashy bodies, burnt beyond recognition to be left unexplained in the mysteries of grief and pain? What memories ran through these young men as they raced for their lives against a fast-moving wall of heat leaving only loved ones behind to explain their catastrophe - how it came to be, the fatal choices they would make, and how it led them to their untimely deaths? How do we, as outside witnesses, transform this catastrophe into the measured grains of consolation so that we are no longer left with sorrow's tragedy? For too many times have we been held silent in our witness to death's unhallowed canvas that would prevent us from voicing our anger. Our disappointments. Or not permitted to voice out loud by a friend's mere presence or society's standards. Leaving us only with the feelings of emptiness, bereavement, deep loss, and sorrowing pain.

Dare we write this tragic story knowing that it is possible there may be no ending that can offer us consolation or absolution? That those connected with this ending may wish it lost forever in the strands of time? Lost from public inspection. Lost from scrutiny. Lost even to failing memory? But perhaps there may be an ending that can be told based upon a storyteller’s faith in seeking its truth, and in the seeking uncover its dramatic ending, so that it could be filled with a story that honors the dead. That might atone for their sufferings while adding to our own understanding at the plight these poor unfortunates found themselves cast upon on a fateful day as they raced for a hilltop that never would come. A day that when it comes would teach us immeasurable lessons through personal lost and horror.

For it was on the Missouri River, in the harshest wildlands of western Montana, that we enter into a survey of the universe’s most basic elements at work. To there discover the heavy winds of a stormy sky flowing unimpeded across the length of a mighty river’s wend till met by undaunted rocky ridges uplifted against shearing mountain cliffs. Cliffs that would cleave those winds into a dozen different down drafts flung off from the white-capped river waters far below to race headlong into unfamiliar gullies and mingling canyons, wild and alone. And there, churn into the deadly gases of hot furnace winds and towering walls of fire that would meet innocent boys intent on controlling its building rage. And though the element of water could not be used high up on those lost ridges, nor would the roiling skies above allow but one drop from its depleted rainstorms, it was here we find the willowy ranks of young men cast between the ages of 17 and 24 who would begin the hard work of flanking their relentless opponent. Who willingly shouldered their heavy iron shovels, the two-man whiplash of buck-toothed timber saws, and the fireman's resourceful Pulaski, that would soon be used to scour the earth to create the hard-won fire lines and many numerous fire breaks necessary to control a fire's rage hungry for the fuel of scrub and fallen limbs.

Bringing us to see yet another element in play here - that of the human spirit - adventurous, iron-willed, courageous, hopeful, as ever can be found in the youthful ranks of young men come of age as smokejumpers, themselves fearless and alone. Whose very lives would very soon be measured in mere minutes and seconds. Not in the days and weeks that they had once come to expect as a spreading wildfire danced through timber-dry conditions upon heavy, cleaving winds towards young men caught unawares of the seething, boiling firestorm brewing on the far slopes down below. A blowup that would shortly race through the hot, simmering canyonland, eating through its scrub and hillock as if its very walls had been set to act as a flinty chimney flue formed eons before to release its rage. Here then will we find the conflagration of five of the most basic elements of the universe - earth, wind, fire, water, and spirit - all combined in one intent and to one end.... That of the death and destruction, and imperiled will and survival, of fifteen brave young men caught unawares in a race only noble hearts may run and lose.

And so it is the task of the storyteller to search for a story that may at times not take on the form of a written work of art when remembering those spare remnant moments of life left to some tragic few. And yet it is left to him or her to uncover what a life may mean when measured out in the short arcs of pathos and struggle as it marches steady onwards towards certain death against a springtime of limericks and lyrics that would make up most of who we are, and what we have, and would have been. Is it too much to ask then of a past depleted life when inspecting his or her earlier moments lived, that it give back to us some sense of life’s final shape and design? Perhaps as proof that we inhabit a world of sublime truth fraught within a chaotic order seemingly found everywhere around and burgeoning with its insanities, sufferings and pains? That within this dark disorder we may come to find lives other-than-our-own that once sought for singular artistic expression that would draw on a mightier canvas when coloured in by life's deeper brush strokes of meanings and shades of intent? That could perhaps give significance to our meager lives when asking - or answering - the questions of “Who we are." "What we are." And the all-important, "Why we are?"

And if there is such a story it will take something of a storyteller to find it, to imagine it, to hear what impulses drove these young men to fight a raging fire that would very shortly turn into their own personal stories of travesty blown up with unimagined ferocity and astonishing quickness. And there perhaps find, within this tragedy, its further end-story that has lied within the bones of their ashes silently uncomposed and decomposing. He should probably be an old storyteller... at least one who is old enough to know that the problem of identity is always a problem and not just a problem of youth. And even old enough to know that the nearest anyone can ever come to finding himself at any given age is to find a story that somehow tells him about himself. What drives him. What keeps him in place. What moves his inmost being towards truth and unseen hidden beauty. For it is in the world of slow-time, beset by death and grief, that truth and art may be found as one element in the most ancient expressions of mankind's corporeal humanity. Of the what, and the why, and the who, that we are. And to which we owe our breath and existence to as we each one move in our own slow-time and steady beat towards life's finality and completion. This then is the art and the craft of the storyteller forever bound with his few salient readers in somber journey's discovery of life's ancient rhymes and prismatic mysteries considered all-the-more divine when wrapped in humanities greatest of struggles... that of fearlessness, desperation and survival.

- Adapted by R.E. Slater

December 23, 2010
rev. April 6, 2012

from Norman Maclean’s (c. 1902-1990) story,

"Young Men & Fire," Chicago Press, 1992 (pp 142-146)

@copyright R.E. Slater Publications

all rights reserved

One of thirteen Stations of the Cross

A rescue ridge too far

Two unlikely survivors who were the youngest and most inexperienced, who had raced from behind

their fellow firefighters in a maddening dash for life itself. One of the two leads the rescue team out

from Mann Gulch while the other gazes back upon the fire's horrific ravages from 12 hours before

when caught in a massive conflagration uniting all fires into one deadly cauldron.

Smokejumpers parachuting down upon a forest fire

Mann Gulch boiling in the summer airs

After reading Norman Maclean's studied tragedy of a fated crew of Smokejumpers stationed in Missoula, Montana, I knew that I must write a poem about the very thing of fire itself - but not simply of fire, but of the God of fire that speaks through holy flames to so fragile a creation formed from the bowels of mother earth in the sublimest of terms. And when I had completed this task I knew immediately that I must then write a second, much longer poem about the Mann Gulch tragedy itself so that my earlier poem could be better understood when framed in the blood, sweat, and tears of a hallowed firefighter crew's misfortune. My reasoning went along the lines of how does one write of the God of creation and expect readers to understand this God of whom you write unless it be through the flared nostrils and terrified breaths of those who have come close to the hand of God and suffered terrible tragedy? Then, and then only, did I feel that my initial poem could better reflect the inspiration that had so fully overwhelmed me when first connecting the two subject matters together as one. And in the process I had hoped to provide a final ending to those unfortunates lives that might live on with us today in some sense of poetic reflection. That reminds us of the many men and women who dedicate themselves each fire season protecting lives and properties, woods and streams, parklands and wildlife. Who have committed themselves to so deadly an occupation against the whims of so fickled a foe.

And so, when in the process of completing this secondary poem I found that I had to stop and lay down my pen for a time overcome by this horrific topic's brutish subject. I wanted to approach these young lives with a deftness of sympathy and heroism that it required as an ode to their human spirit of perseverance.  Moreover, a holistic ending needed to be found that was unlike its parts, but born from its parts, that might provide an adequate capstone of homage and requiem. Since then I have stayed away for nearly a year having not thought too much about this subject matter, allowing it to rest unresolved in my mind and heart like the furrowed gravesites that lie deeply silent in the tawny bunchgrass on a faraway hillside in Western Montana as I searched for answers that may not come. Amongst markers gathered in their solitary clusters keeping nightly watch beneath the starry heavens looking down from their evening wonders to behold the untold ruins of brave men resting as undaunted testaments to mankind's brave will forged within the hot kilns of creation's holy flames and pungent altars. Altars that no more rest than do our searching hearts, seeking acceptable sacrifices that only time eternal may someday provide as we cannot, bowed before our heavy offerings, made by human hands, broken and tearfully clasped. For no other offerings are so dear as those who are taken from us, whom we are helpless to aide in their suffering, except to give homage in lasting memorial to future generations of firefighters better equipped and trained through remembrance of the hard lessons of those who have gone on before. Courageous lives. Full lives. Lives ended too soon. That lead the way for those who survive that follow after behind their fire lines, and smoky trails, hearing upon our ear last calls echoing to one another against a tangled wilderness distantly crying "All's well."

- R.E. Slater

February 1, 2012
rev. April 6, 2012

@copyright R.E. Slater Publications

all rights reserved

The winged statue of victory stands in front of smoke from fires in the village of ancient Olympia,

near the birthplace of the Olympic games, in south-west Greece. A huge effort by firefighters,

water-dropping aircraft, and fire trucks, succeeded in keeping a raging blaze away from the

2,800-year-old site - the holiest sanctuary in ancient Greece.

An Unfinished Poem

Excerpt: Opening Lines

by R.E. Slater

Pray thee dark fire angels burning bright

Didst thou enter into redemption’s night
When glimpsing too soon creation’s fires
Then fell from earth in fervent rejoice?

At seeing the black heavens hotly ablaze
Roaring in ancient flames of heat and haze
Seething fiery whirls of immortal breath
Alit the turbulent winds of righteousness?

And didst the hot flames lure thy fearing tred
Overwhelming thy heart by jealous desire
Whilst racing to see stunning glories dred
Shaking the foundations in furious might?

And was it thy glad heart that joyfully leapt
Blazing hot from within thy bursting soul
Beholding Almighty’s hidden glories wept
Bowing rocks and hills in terrible flames?

Whose burning presence measures breath
Bringing all mortal works to ashes and ruin
Swirling His fires of destruction upon mortal sin
Destroying the days and nights of all living flesh?

.
.
.

- R.E. Slater

January 2011

@copyright R.E. Slater Publications

all rights reserved

RE Slater - The Concept of Justice

November saw me writing again but not like I had been the year before when I was hungry to write and felt more highly creative.  And yet, during the past months, I have added several new poems, though my main task had been to re-read and edit my finished poems after having printed them into a singular collection back in June. Currently I have read or edited the first third of my poems but have so many more to read and consider that I believe it will take another year or two while writing and developing newer poems during this same time period. Moreover, time and distance has allowed me a more dispassionate review of my work, as I consider (i) whether the material is "readable" and "understandable"; (ii) whether the themes have gotten lost in the words; and, (iii) whether the style or "synchronistic beat" of the verse is how it was intended to be.  Ideally, I do not wish to re-write any of these older poems, but some seem so awkward as to require another editorial visit before leaving them in a final, more publishable form.

Most recently I have been working on a single ode these past several months that has driven me to distraction. I cannot seem to find its voice. What is written has become too preachy, too strident. Many times I have thought about deleting the entire verse and walking away from it. It has become one of my least favorites poems after having promised so much when I first set about composing it. It's entitled "Behold The Ruins of Athens" which was an altogether original title for me until I looked it up after completing it to find George Hill's magnificent piece. Ah well, at least it was original in thought and production, making me glad that I had composed it first before seeing Mr. Hill's most excellent work.

In summary, "Athens" consists of two pages, and though short, it's subject matter felt quite dense and complex; refused to simplify itself; and demanded that the reader read slow down enough to think through the word pictures and ideas presented within its narrative in constructive, thoughtful, fashion.  In hindsight I had thought about pulling this poem apart and re-composing one or two of its major ideas, but instead plowed on to put all my emotions and thoughts into tightly constructed phrases while hoping for the best.

And because "Athens" is so blunt and massive in its structure I finally decided on reconstructing it through the course of several drafts, wishing to slow the reader down to hear what I was trying to say.  Thus, the poem's original form was in 2x6 line meter which I indented every second line.  But the lines were overlong like my "Stars and Moon" piece and so, after three months of re-writing it ad-nauseam I decided on an entirely new poetic verse structure.  At first I tried a simple 4-verse meter to replace every two lines of the ode.  But this didn't work and served to "mudge up" its flow and rhythm.  Next I tried doubling the 6-line meter into an extended 12-verse format. This I liked a lot but then I modified it again by adding a tabbed indentation to every second line and that seemed to do the trick. It slowed the reader down just enough to consider the words while not overwhelming the voice and rhythm of the poetic ode. In fact, it seemed to "stretch out" the complex of ideas that it holds while "simplifying" the poetic ode overall.

These changes further necessitated a re-composition of several other related odes  each as similar in thematic tone and structure. And eventually, because of their similar voices and contents I placed them all together, side-by-side,  under a new chapter-heading entitled "Of Justice, War and Anthems". Thus I have four separate pieces that address the concept of justice and our personal response-and-accountability for justice's conveyance within society each day of our lives. Where these emotions came from I'm not sure - maybe from acts of injustice I saw as a youth, or perhaps from my reading of the Christian bible, especially in the historical sections of the Old Testament. But whatever the reasonings, I have attempted to recall those early formative and raw emotions into these poetic sections as imperative catalysts for acts of justice to be committed in the world today.

As a child, the unfolding drama of the American/Vietnam War played itself out in daily black-and-white pictures through the eyes and ears of television's evening news, as it showed the horrors of war brought to both friend and foe alike. Further, the harm and devastation witnessed from civil riots and political rallies around the country created for some very intense emotions when watching or reading about young people dying in clashes with police, seeing the hippie movement's disgust with society at-large, and beholding intense racial clashes over segregation. This came home all the more when saying goodbye to dad as he went out into these civil disturbances as a policeman dressed in full riot gear as a former Korean War veteran.

Generally (and perhaps idealistically) as free societies, we must  actively advocate living peaceably with one another regardless of our differences; seeking and praying for peace and goodwill among men daily, especially during times of hatred, misunderstanding, and unrest; siding with victims of injustice harassed or harmed by societal fears and ignorance; and in everything determine to show love and support to everyone we meet through open and honest communications, fair trade, tolerance, mercy, and forbearance with one another.  Free societies demand no less a commitment and no higher a calling. We are called to bring peace to all, seek justice for all, and to serve the exquisite riches of liberty, democracy, and honor as equal recipients of humanity's burden and privilege.

The concept of justice is so plain a concept to understand - and so quick a feeling of empathy to arise within us - when couched in cultural or national tones of prejudice and hate. And though we may think we might understand its meaning, it isn't until we are personally confronted by injustices that what we believe is only then truly enacted into acts of real justice. Where individuals are disparaged, harmed, murdered, persecuted or oppressed, than our hearts - our very emotions - must become intolerant towards the purveyors of those atrocities. Whether committed by bullies, or gangs, or overlords; whether despots or tyrants; if "peace and goodwill" are terms brutally ignored then "acts of justice" will never be a societal, nor a personal commitment, to restoring its abuses and neglects.

Because of this, I've created my poetic odes to be more warlike, more strident, as "drumbeats" to a nation's heart desiring peace and goodwill among men.  They speak to justice when love seems to have failed, and they show very little toleration for those evil men and women who cruelly harm others. Likewise, the Christian bible is very clear how important the compact of justice is between individuals and societies. That there is very little room for denying its observation of human rights when those rights are either casually or violently ignored in both moral and ethical tones by individuals and human institutions, from local to international levels.  For the very concept of justice and love intermingle each with the other. More simply said, "Justice is love outwardly shown, while love is Justice inwardly found. They are one and the same."

And so, in some small way I hope that my poetic creations continue to preach the values of justice and love as I've written them without apology for the strong language and imperatives used. I wished for them to be independent voices to all men everywhere who strive towards a supremely human humanity. To be moral and ethical with one another. To seek the virtues of Love and Justice. To decry acts of inhumanity. To seek the humanness of man in  his every act of vice and virtue. It is sometimes said that man is but brute beast, yet at his most human when just and loving. Conversely, when man is not just and loving, than truly he is but merely a brute beast worthy of extinction, ruin and judgment.


R.E. Slater
November 2010

Dilemmas and Choices, Tiredness and Task

Early February 2010 has found me pressed by some kind of personal spiritual warfare which has become deeply besetting to my task at hand of writing finely and conscientiously. With it came time and money concerns that are ever my old nemesis and bearers of bad news. But on the upside, I received an unlooked-for invitation to a college luncheon to meet the university president and while there hope to speak to a professor I've long been considering to discuss a book project I have in mind. And whether he would be personally interested in collaborating on it with me. It'll take a year or so to write but I already have the notes completed and am guessing its length at about 250 pages, maybe 300 with footnotes, appendices and diagrams.  I could probably write this in a couple of weeks but am thinking that a schedule of one month per chapter theme may be a more reasonable goal. But before attending to this task however I would like to finish my remaining poetry sets that I've roughed out for completion. I expect that to be yet another year in the making. And so, time, time, time. So fickled, so pressing, so withdrawing and never friend.

Currently I'm finishing up a large body of poetic pieces which will take me through most of this year I believe.  And I've yet to find a publicist who could help me market my material successfully when I get these completed. It probably would help if I would look but it seems a large and disappointing task ahead of me at the moment.  I started writing for myself the last two years and believe that what I've written will inspire many who would read my material on a number of different levels and in a number of different areas of their life. Generally, I've written what I deem to be popular poetry and not cryptic poetry for every age - having written some pieces for kids and other pieces for adults; some for holidays, others for events; some for life stages and others for momentous times.  If anything, I wish I had more years to expand each select area I've written about, embellishing each area with more similar themes; especially fun/practical/whimsical pieces for kids and adults who are still exhilarating in their childhood at whatever age they may be.

Currently, I'm stuck in the middle of a prose piece which is atypically long (about 15pp) and grasping for clarity and direction. I call it "The Tapestry".  It's completely written through its first four sections but I intend to re-write parts of each as well as to add additional sections to it while re-orientating it away from the first half's western mindset couched in dualistic/dichotomous terms towards an eastern dualism focusing on the balance and harmony of the first half's themes.  It may then consist of two parts dealing with the same/similar subject matter but written paradoxically showing two sides of the same coin, as it were.  All of it couched in a storyline of mystery and "aha" moments.  Upon completion, it'll be the third piece complimenting two other pieces ("Stars and Moon," "Celtic Nights") which I've written, each as different in subject material and style as from the other, but forming a neat trilogy that I had never expected and only saw belatedly during their development.

This current prose piece is a dark read about fate and destiny, sovereignty and free will, determinism and choice couched in mythic Egyptian symbolism using Genesis as an overlay. The other two pieces deal with several other biblical themes of eschatology, harmatology and soteriology while utilizing either old English folklore or Celtic tones, and each set in allegorical or biblical parable format.  They are fun reads (esp. alone in the dark) and may mimic Edgar Allen Poe a little bit - but never as cleverly as he had done!! Beyond that, they require a bit more thinking amongst them and do not simply serve as idle tales in-and-of themselves for mere thrill.

However, between daily obstacles, demands, and necessities, I've found these past weeks a difficult run and it would be nice to find some funding and an office or cottage somewhere from which I may daily write that could produce inspiration to my weary soul, and that without interruption and with considered focus. It's hard to be creative when pressed by so much, and its hard to write everyday when I'm stretched by so many personal demands. Still, even when I don't feel like writing I've found that once I sit down to attend to the task at hand, that words and ideas will flow out from me, along with lots and lots of new material that someday I hope to develop. Which is all well and good, I suppose, but my frustration lies in the fact that I have so much to write about and constantly fight for the time to do this ungrateful, unending, undying task so well while so finely misunderstood and slighted by my fellow companions ignorant of its possible consequences and blessings. Its as perplexing some days as my would-be allegories.

As always,

Peace

RE Slater

February 9, 2010


Addendum

I did meet with the professor above and had a delightful time discovering an old friend made ever more close because of a common mentor and teacher each of us had studied under but at separate times. The bond was encouraging and his help both welcomed and professional as much as it was warm and personal. I couldn't have been more happy at this discovery. Now for ability and strength to begin this belated task of some 25+ years in the making.

First Christmas Update

I unfortunately got sidetracked by a commercial project the past 30 days and lost time writing.  Given the choice I'd rather have been writing but probably could've used the break... so I'm going with it.  A week ago or so I spent rearranging my titles list into a possible content structure and finished Flagpole Days, Autumn Harvest, Solitude, my Swahili poem, added a Carmina, tried to rewrite Hiawatha failing to find the rhythm or tone I wanted, and rewrote Painted Rooms again.

Looking forward, I have at least a dozen or so roughed-out poems I'd like to finish including four or five that are interconnected to a common theme, along with two legendary tales (one's quite lengthy).  I had hoped to get all of them done before Christmas and to book-bind them for my folks and family but can see now it'll be somewhere between March and July by the time I finish these.

It also seems that my creativity period has dried up as I search for better ways to express myself.  I'm going to take some time off to read a novel or two, and finish some other projects I have to do; maybe pick at things as I go along just to keep my hand in the task of writing and not get too far away from it lest I come to a stop altogether.  It's been a long 12 months.

My goal was a hundred pieces and I'm at 58 with 10-12 to go, making it 68-70.  I also have six completed short stories and another six I need to rewrite.  And then I have one very lengthy sports story I wrote a year ago which needs to be re-written in a different voice, as well as a theology book I've started.  But each time I do I get some personal disaster which pulls me away from it (which seems highly coincidental to me, as it's been a several year pattern ongoing).

My theology book consists of two major sections of 10-12 chapters each.  The first section is a teaching section and the second section reviews each previous chapter integrating them with one another.  I'm tracing major thematic elements between the testaments and tying them together to help simplify reading the Christian bible from its vast theological complexity.  It's mainly for my son and daughter as a biblical theological premier (not systematics theology but biblical theology).  Once it's written I have a theological professor in mind whom I wish to contact who teaches and thinks in the style as my beloved friend, and now deceased professor, Carl B. Hoch.  With his input I hope to remove inaccuracies and update it generally from someone much closer to the material than I currently am.

Overall, I like writing short stories, but I prefer the poetry format better because of all the many varieties that it allows for personal expression, creating new words and ideas, tone, coloring, shading, everything!  Sooo, I think I made a good start even though I'm short by 30 pieces, but its still enough to judge where I'm at and see if its any good (my general impression is that they each need a rewrite to sharpen up their tone and focus and readability) and whether they might stand up to reader interest or not.  I haven't tried a Shakespearan sonnet and would like to try that someday just to see if I can.  But with Flagpole Days I did try a running sentence broken into 12 verse sections and am quite pleased with its lilt and composition.  The thought occurred as I was listening to Mozart's Requiem which gave me the idea of seeing how many rounds/voices could be put into a musical piece and still get one overarching theme... I think he got up to 14 competing rounds/voices making for one massive sound which is exquisite to the ear held in rapture.

At this point I should probably find some outside opinions and a publisher to see what's next, though generally I find this a distasteful task and would rather not.  My knowledge of critics tells me to beware overvaluing their opinions... John Keats is a good example of perserverance by following heart/pen while allowing the task itself to resolve any future readership.  Too, I've only ever have written for me and my kids, but from the several people who have read them I think I should share them as they are generally liked, though I care not about this but whether they might add thought and contemplation as I speak my soul.  I do worry about how personal they are, but I'm sure every poet does. They are myself unsheathed as I can allow that task, and a reader will either like them or not. I cannot be anything less than myself and can only speak of what I hear and wish to write against the streams of humanity that sings its own songs alongside mine own.

RE Slater

December 10, 2009

Finding My Voice

Since last October of 2008 I have written as much as I have had time to - mostly poetry but a few short stories as well.  Through this process I have written what has been most important to me from years past but have known that these pieces would be a "developmental record" of my progress as a new writer formally seeking his own words and styles and thoughts.  I have consciously known that it will take some time for me to develop my writing style and have recently come upon a phrase most apt in describing my progress - that of "finding my own voice" as a poet and as a writer.  Too much of my style feels like it is narrative (though it isn't) and I should like to step back from that as much as I can, and perhaps read some poets to catch their style and help me in mine own more quickly.  But on this point I still refuse to read other poets so as to keep my words and thoughts fresh and essentially mine own and not theirs.  But lacking formal writing classes these past poets and writers may be of help to me and so, I shall intend to briefly explore some styles which appeal to me and my style, without straying too long in anyone matter for I still wish for my material to be fresh and original.

It is now mid-October of 2009 and I continue to push out at least one to three documents a week along with my other duties and commitments as husband, father, dutiful son, son-in-law, consultant, community services and so on.  Thus, I have many half-written pieces which I wish to go back and complete as newer pieces continue to cross my mind and heart - all of which takes time away from my effort in finishing my original drafts.  And since I do not wish to lose these creative moments, I try to capture them while attempting to finish my rough drafts as well.  This is proving to be a hard process which can easily overwhelm me amid the vicissitudes of life.

I also have a theology paper I wish to write up as a book and have started this task as well (again).  But each time that I have made a major attack to get it properly going I seem to experience some little personally upheaval in my life.  The thought has crossed my mine that it is not unlike being prevented by the devil because of the severity of these roadblocks.  But, I do not think my words are so important that they haven't been said before and require any devil for prevention.  However, it has been a very odd and coincidental experience.

The book itself is to be written in 2-parts - the subject matter itself and then the integration of those subjects with one another.  This project will encompass the dozen-or-so major themes of the bible (sic, pertaining to "biblical theology" not "systematic theology"... this is a BIG difference) as they cross between the testaments and are integrated with one another.  This subject was a major part of my training in college and later seminary, and I should've pursued a PhD in biblical studies on this but did not.  I had neither the money nor the will to study any further, being somewhat exhausted after years of study and needing to work.  But my boy has shown an interest in biblical knowledge and perhaps my primer could be useful both to him, his friends and any young would-be Christian theologs wishing guidance in thematic matters.  At least that is my hope.

And so, I have been tragically stopped again and am writing of more practical experiences and observations from my personal life into my poems and trying to mix my training with my writings.  Perhaps these "lesser" poetic pieces will be of more aide in the long run to the general reading public than a large stuffy book filled with important "theological" subject matter.  At least that is my hope and one of my purposes in writing... to get God into the details of life, including my own, failings and all, in as many ways as I can be creative and "non-Christian" about it.

RE Slater
October 28, 2009

Sylvia Plath - The Moon and the Yew Tree

This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary
The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue.
The grasses unload their griefs on my feet as if I were God
Prickling my ankles and murmuring of their humility
Fumy, spiritous mists inhabit this place.
Separated from my house by a row of headstones.
I simply cannot see where there is to get to.

The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right,
White as a knuckle and terribly upset.
It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet
With the O-gape of complete despair. I live here.
Twice on Sunday, the bells startle the sky --
Eight great tongues affirming the Resurrection
At the end, they soberly bong out their names.

The yew tree points up, it has a Gothic shape.
The eyes lift after it and find the moon.
The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary.
Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls.
How I would like to believe in tenderness -
The face of the effigy, gentled by candles,
Bending, on me in particular, its mild eyes.

I have fallen a long way. Clouds are flowering
Blue and mystical over the face of the stars
Inside the church, the saints will all be blue,
Floating on their delicate feet over the cold pews,
Their hands and faces stiff with holiness.
The moon sees nothing of this. She is bald and wild.
And the message of the yew tree is blackness - blackness and silence.

by Sylvia Plath




 

Sylvia Plath - Years

 

 

 

 

They enter as animals from the outer

Space of holly where spikes
Are not thoughts I turn on, like a Yogi,
But greenness, darkness so pure
They freeze and are.

O God, I am not like you
In your vacuous black,
Stars stuck all over, bright stupid confetti.
Eternity bores me,
I never wanted it.

What I love is
The piston in motion . . .
My soul dies before it.
And the hooves of the horses,
There merciless churn.

And you, great Stasis . . .
What is so great in that!
Is it a tiger this year, this roar at the door?
It is a Christus,
The awful God-bit in him.

Dying to fly and be done with it?
The blood berries are themselves,
They are very still.
The hooves will not have it,
In blue distance the pistons hiss.

by Sylvia Plath

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sylvia Plath - The Colossus

 

 

 

"I shall never get you put together entirely,
Pieced, glued, and properly jointed.
Mule-bray, pig-grunt and bawdy cackles
Proceed from your great lips.
It's worse than a barnyard.

Perhaps you consider yourself an oracle,
Mouthpiece of the dead, or of some god or other.
Thirty years now I have labored
To dredge the silt from your throat.
I am none the wiser.

Scaling little ladders with glue pots and pails of lysol
I crawl like an ant in mourning
Over the weedy acres of your brow
To mend the immense skull plates and clear
The bald, white tumuli of your eyes.

A blue sky out of the Oresteia
Arches above us. O father, all by yourself
You are pithy and historical as the Roman Forum.
I open my lunch on a hill of black cypress.
Your fluted bones and acanthine hair are littered

In their old anarchy to the horizon-line.
It would take more than a lightning-stroke
To create such a ruin.
Nights, I squat in the cornucopia
Of your left ear, out of the wind.

Counting the red stars and those of plum-color.
The sun rises under the pillar of your tongue.
My hours are married to shadow.
No longer do I listen for the scrape of a keel
On the blank stones of the landing."

by Sylvia Plath

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happy Anniversary! Journeys of a Would-Be Poet

Dolan's pub (Limerick, Ireland) - Irish Traditional Music Session

July 7, 2015

The Monahan Twig; John In The Mist

Apr 25, 2021

Aspirations of a Would-Be Poet

by R.E. Slater

October 6, 2009

Thanks to a local group of Celtic musicians I stumbled upon last evening I have been able to re-imagine and complete a new set of verses today to add to a growing portfolio; this time writing of a Brigadoon-like experience through the greater length of today. Now for some rest after a long day of writing. My mind and hands are tired. I will take the rest of the week to firm up the edges of this new poem and refine it to make it more clear and more readable.

Last week I finished a personal narrative I had started working on in April as an all-too-common experience in my childhood. It starts out as a simple story but gathers additional layers of meaning as I add more thoughts and details to what at first seems a plain homily. I intend to add it to a selection of other personal narratives which will flesh each other out and perhaps provide historical relevance for the times I am writing about.

Otherwise, I spent one day simply re-organizing my stories in relation to one another and setting them into slip-case books which I can manage should I need to re-arrange them again. I retitled each book and can better find each written verse in compendium to one another. While doing this I found several poems which needed a word here or there, an adverb, a verb, a pronoun in re-reading them in a fresh light gained by distance away from these pieces. Without these additions they felt awkward to me and/or incomplete to the theme(s) I had intended. Even though I keep telling myself to refrain from overmuch editing at this point - that they are what they are and should now be left alone.

I should also add that I started on a short story and added a poem to it which is now completed even though the story isn't. I've also added some pictures to this story to help give it a more readable symmetry in describing what I was seeing. I think many readers will be better able to visualize what I'm writing about through the usage of these photos. Because of this, I may wish to add personal photo stock selectively to several previously written stories to help enliven their pages as well. Further, there is a collection of poems I'm writing as one complete set which will be related to this newest story either directly or indirectly. To date it consists of 4-6 pages contained in 4 sections and may grow by a couple more pages into another narrative homily that I wish to relate since my childhood stood so vastly different from many my age.

Apart from personal narratives I have tried to write descriptively in various styles and, have another 30 or so poems roughed out in various stages of completion. Either as legends or tales, allegories or interpretive parables, sonnets or songs, etc. When these are completed I should like to try my hand at more irregular lyrical poetry and break away from the symmetry I've produced in the first year of my experience. Which, by the way, had begun in the month of October of last year... so this then is my first anniversary of writing. I've come a long way but have so much more to write about and hope to have the chance to complete what I've started and intend to finish.

Anyway, unlike my first set of 100 poems, I think I'll need to read some poets in order to be able to copy their styles since their styles are so foreign from my mindset. I may be a year away from actually beginning this task since I am not finished with my current set of tasks.

But afterwards when I am done I should then like to try something remarkably different and foreign to my mind and ear. I think Dylan Thomas may be a good example to me however I do not like his rambling verse which seems to lose its meaning over the distance of time. So, should I chose to go this route, I'll try not to ramble and try as best I can to keep it relevant despite the movement of culture, era and language away from my era. This will be hard to do I think but good poets can keep their relevancy for the most part. Since I do not expect readers to be historical anthropologists and culturally literate I will try to write about our common condition and not so specifically as to lose its translation. At least that is my hope.

I can tell that I have been rambling because I am so tired but I thought to put these several lists together to remind myself of my journey and possible future goals.  Forgive me and apologies and good night.

RE Slater

October 6, 2009

End Note (June 25, 2021). I have no idea what I was talking about when mentioning Dylan Thomas years ago! I love his poetry. Love it! - re slater 

My Writing Progress Thus Far

I would like to say at the onset that I reserve the right to ramble in these blogs and not have to think about how I'm going to say something. More simply, my blogs are not how I write but a form of personal communication about what I am doing. Thanks for allowing me this unstructured pleasure.

As earlier mentioned last month, I have been working through both recent and older poems I've written and am glad I have. Many were in serious need of editing after reviewing them. Maybe because I'm becoming less rusty at writing or because I can better critique my past writings. Whatever it is, I find that this has become a necessary task once a poem has been produced and has laid in the closet for awhile simmering and aging.

For example, the Celtic poem I had written changed again when I added 4 end-verses to it. It took a cool allegory and gave it wings so that it tied all previous verses back to itself and to each other. Thus giving to the poem more flexibility and freedom.

As another example, the poem "Looking Glass" was six months old and in great need of repair and updating. After which it seemed to be able to fairly "sing" on its own. If I had not looked at it then its flaws would not have been seen.

Thus, by allowing several months or more to go by I can better re-visualize what I was trying to say originally and can more immediately see the errors within that piece. That, and the fact that my writing skills are slowly improving so that I have more ideas that I can add with a larger vocabulary and greater personal familiarity with stylistic differences.

Overall my word-pictures seem to be getting better and I am becoming more comfortable mixing my metaphors and themes in new integrated ways that provide quicker apprehension and sensual binding of the reader to the main themes.

I'm also discovering that language is very fluid because of its symbolic nature and cultural context and that to say something simply may be impossible yet the most practical and important task to work on. Succinctness and conveyance have been my greatest struggles and best rewards.

And then there is the element of meter; I had one poem I had written several months ago set in the standard 4-line meter form. But however much I tried to make it work (upon re-edit) I found it simply wasn't working. And so I changed it around to 9-line meter which is irregular and offbeat in rhythm. That changed made the entire poem so much better I couldn't believe it! Who would've thought?! By allowing it to speak to me on its own terms instead of on my own terms, and by learning to listening to it rather than forcing it into something it was not for, made all the difference. Thus, I'm learning that each poem is unique and requires me to better listen to what it is trying to say.

RE Slater
September 16, 2009

Still writing

Today I wrote a poem of 8 lines in 10 stanzas and kept it as sparse as I could. Played around with the elements, tones and colors on this one.

A couple days ago I finished a Gaelic poem started 4 weeks ago. This was my first attempt at an allegory. I wanted it to feel like a Charlotte Bronte read on the moors. Coincidentally, it ended up thematically paralleling 2 interpretive parables written a couple months ago which are still being finalized. So I think I will group them together in their own section.

On my short list to do, I would like to work through and finalize 10 recent poems and 1 short story I've roughed out. Each unit is more-or-less completed but I like to go back and edit them after letting some time go by. They read differently to me when I do this as opposed to when I am actually writing them. For me, it helps to give an "outsider's perspective" to gauge whether they're interesting, readable, clumsy, awkward, and so on.

Several of these poems are lengthy and will be more demanding in their review. I have one that is especially long - about 12 pages; but it's a good narrative broken into 4 sections and will be fun to ramble through while thinking over the content I'm presenting.

Lastly, the past two months I've reworked several of my "finished" poems. Each of these were at least 6 months old and in need of updating. Why? It seems that the more I write, the more words and styles I have in my head which then helps me to better edit my past completed works. And since I'm so new to writing, it seems that for now I'll have to allow this habit. But over time I hope to limit myself from this type of "introspective" labor and simple let the poem pass or fail on its own merit once they are submitted to the "done" side of the ledger.

RE Slater

August 27, 2009

Dylan Thomas - In the White Giant's Thigh

In the White Giant's Thigh

by Dylan Thomas

Through throats where many rivers meet, the curlews cry,

Under the conceiving moon, on the high chalk hill,

And there this night I walk in the white giant's thigh

Where barren as boulders women lie longing still

To labour and love though they lay down long ago.

Through throats where many many rivers meet, the women pray,

Pleading in the waded bay for the seed to flow

Though the names on their weed grown stones are rained away,

And alone in the night's eternal, curving act

They yearn with tongues of curlews for the unconceived

And immemorial sons of the cudgelling, hacked

Hill. Who once in gooseskin winter loved all ice leaved

In the courters' lanes, or twined in the ox roasting sun

In the wains tonned so high that the wisps of the hay

Clung to the pitching clouds, or gay with any one

Young as they in the after milking moonlight lay

Under the lighted shapes of faith and their moonshade

Petticoats galed high, or shy with the rough riding boys,

Now clasp me to their grains in the gigantic glade,

Who once, green countries since, were a hedgerow of joys.

Time by, their dust was flesh the swineherd rooted sly,

Flared in the reek of the wiving sty with the rush

Light of his thighs, spreadeagle to the dunghill sky,

Or with their orchard man in the core of the sun's bush

Rough as cows' tongues and thrashed with brambles their buttermilk

Manes, under the quenchless summer barbed gold to the bone,

Or rippling soft in the spinney moon as the silk

And ducked and draked white lake that harps to a hail stone.

Who once were a bloom of wayside brides in the hawed house

And heard the lewd, wooed field flow to the coming frost,

The scurrying, furred small friars squeal, in the dowse

Of day, in the thistle aisles, till the white owl crossed

Their breast, the vaulting does roister, the horned bucks climb

Quick in the wood at love, where a torch of foxes foams,

All birds and beasts of the linked night uproar and chime

And the mole snout blunt under his pilgrimage of domes,

Or, butter fat goosegirls, bounced in a gambo bed,

Their breasts full of honey, under their gander king

Trounced by his wings in the hissing shippen, long dead

And gone that barley dark where their clogs danced in the spring,

And their firefly hairpins flew, and the ricks ran round--

(But nothing bore, no mouthing babe to the veined hives

Hugged, and barren and bare on Mother Goose's ground

They with the simple Jacks were a boulder of wives)--

Now curlew cry me down to kiss the mouths of their dust.

The dust of their kettles and clocks swings to and fro

Where the hay rides now or the bracken kitchens rust

As the arc of the billhooks that flashed the hedges low

And cut the birds' boughs that the minstrel sap ran red.

They from houses where the harvest kneels, hold me hard,

Who heard the tall bell sail down the Sundays of the dead

And the rain wring out its tongues on the faded yard,

Teach me the love that is evergreen after the fall leaved

Grave, after Belovéd on the grass gulfed cross is scrubbed

Off by the sun and Daughters no longer grieved

Save by their long desires in the fox cubbed

Streets or hungering in the crumbled wood: to these

Hale dead and deathless do the women of the hill

Love for ever meridian through the courters' trees

And the daughters of darkness flame like Fawkes fires still.

Dylan Thomas
http://www.dylanthomas.com/

* * * * * * *

Analysis of Poem

DASHING-DANNY-DILLINGER

eNotes

Dylan Thomas’ sensual poem “In the White Giant’s Thigh” is reminiscent of the work of poet D.H. Lawrence in that Thomas interestingly conflates the human body and nature in order to highlight the interconnected relationship between humans and the natural world. More specifically, Thomas does this through his potent imagery depicting barren women longing to conceive children and equating this imagery with their natural surroundings. Thomas defamiliarizes images of potency and fertility, and juxtaposes them with women “barren as boulders”:

“Through throats where many rivers meet, the curlews cry,

Under the conceiving moon, on the high chalk hill,

And there this night I walk in the white giant’s thigh

Where barren as boulders women lie longing still

To labour and love though they lay down long ago.”

Indeed, one image that is especially powerful is the image of the giant itself. According to Ralph Maude in [title], the giant is an important figure in the poem, and points to a historical basis that Thomas may have pulled from:

“The notes to collected poems… present a photograph of the ‘Mighty Giant of Cerne Abbas’, wielding a club (which could have supplied Thomas with ‘the cugelling [sic], hacked hill’) and an equally prominent male member” (158).

This phallic giant, thus, is an especially important figure in highlighting the desires of these barren women. Moreover, the giant is a life-giving force as well as a violent figure, with his phallic cudgel hacking the natural landscape.

The final line is provocative in that it pulls the poem together as a cohesive whole. Here, Thomas subverts the expectations of nature, and prominently displays the agency of humanity:

“Hale dead and deathless do the women of the hill

Love forever meridian through the courters’ trees

And the daughters of darkness flame like Fawkes fires still.”

The women are revolting against their nature; that is to say, they reject the fact that they are barren and still burn for a desire to conceive. Thomas’ brilliant use of the image of Guy Fawkes lends the end a revolutionary tone; the women rise against their nature.

Thomas’ poem examines the sensuality of the human form and its bond with nature, while also exalting the potency and violence, both literally and figuratively, of both.

---

I pulled my textual evidence from:

• Dylan Thomas, The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas
• Ralph Maud, Where Have the Old Words Got Me?: Explications of Dylan Thomas's Collected Poems

* * * * * * *

© Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images

Biography of Dylan Thomas

poetry foundation

1914–1953

Born in Swansea, Wales, Dylan Thomas is famous for his acutely lyrical and emotional poetry, as well as his turbulent personal life. The originality of his work makes categorization difficult. In his life he avoided becoming involved with literary groups or movements, and unlike other prominent writers of the 1930s—such as W.H. Auden and Stephen Spender, for example—he had little use for socialistic ideas in his art. Thomas can be seen as an extension into the 20th century of the general movement called Romanticism, particularly in its emphasis on imagination, emotion, intuition, spontaneity, and organic form. Considered to be one of the greatest Welsh poets of all time, Thomas is largely known for his imaginative use of language and vivid imagery in his poems.

Thomas began writing poetry as a child, and was publishing by his teens. His notebooks from 1930 and 1934, when he was 16 to 20 years old, reveal the young poet’s struggle with a number of personal crises. In his 1965 Dylan Thomas, Jacob Korg described them as “related to love affairs, to industrial civilization, and to the youthful problems of finding one’s identity.” Revised versions of some of the notebooks’ poems became in 1934 his first published volume of poetry, Eighteen Poems. Published in December 1934, it received little notice at first, but by the following spring some influential newspapers and journals had reviewed it favorably.

Like James Joyce before him, Dylan Thomas was obsessed with words—with their sound and rhythm and especially with their possibilities for multiple meanings. This richness of meaning, an often illogical and revolutionary syntax, and catalogues of cosmic and sexual imagery render Thomas’s early poetry original and difficult. In a letter to Richard Church, Thomas commented on what he considered some of his own excesses: “Immature violence, rhythmic monotony, frequent muddle-headedness, and a very much overweighted imagery that leads often to incoherence.” Similarly, in a letter to Glyn Jones, he wrote: “My own obscurity is quite an unfashionable one, based, as it is, on a preconceived symbolism derived (I’m afraid all this sounds wooly and pretentious) from the cosmic significance of the human anatomy.”

The Eighteen Poems reveal some of Thomas’s key themes, which he was to return to later in his career: the unity of time, the similarity between creative and destructive forces in the universe, and the correspondence of all living things. This last theme was identified by Elder Olson in The Poetry of Dylan Thomas as part of the tradition of the microcosm-macrocosm: “He analogizes the anatomy of man to the structure of the universe … and sees the human microcosm as an image of the macrocosm, and conversely.”

During the almost two years between the publication of Eighteen Poems in 1934 and Twenty-five Poems in 1936, Thomas moved back and forth between London and Wales a great deal. In London he met influential people in the literary world, including Vernon Watkins, an older man whose sedate lifestyle contrasted markedly with Thomas’s. Watkins became a frequent source of money for the continually destitute Thomas. During this period Thomas’s drinking became a serious problem, and his friends would sometimes take him off to out-of-the-way places in Cornwall and Ireland to remove him from temptation with the hope that he would do more writing.

Thomas’s second volume of poetry, Twenty-five Poems, was published in September 1936. Most of the poems were revised from the notebooks; Constantine FitzGibbon reported in The Life of Dylan Thomas that “only six entirely new poems, that is to say poems written in the year and a half between the publication of [Eighteen Poems] and the despatch of the second volume to the printers, are to be found in that volume.” In his Dylan Thomas, Paul Ferris noted that “the reviews were generally favourable, but with one exception they were not as enthusiastic as they were for [Eighteen Poems].” This exception, however, almost assured the volume’s commercial success; it was a laudatory review by Dame Edith Sitwell in the Sunday Times. As cited by Ferris, the review proclaimed: “The work of this very young man (he is twenty-two years of age) is on a huge scale, both in theme and structurally. … I could not name one poet of this, the youngest generation, who shows so great a promise, and even so great an achievement.”

The volume includes a significant sonnet sequence of 10 poems, “Altarwise by owl-light,” written in Ireland the year before publication. In these sonnets Thomas moved from the pre-Christian primitivism of most of the Eighteen Poems to a Christian mythology based upon love. While much of the attention given to Twenty-five Poems has been focused on the religious sonnets, the volume as a whole contains indications of a shift in emphasis in Thomas’s writing. Richard Morton noted in An Outline of the Works of Dylan Thomas that the poems of this volume are “concerned with the relationship between the poet and his environment,” particularly the natural environment. “In Twenty-five Poems, we can see the beginnings of the pastoral mode which reaches its fulfillment in the great lyrics of Thomas’s last poems.” And, as Korg said, “at least three of the poems in the second volume are about the poet’s reactions to other people, themes of an entirely different class from those of [Eighteen Poems]; and these three anticipate [Thomas’s] turning outward in his later poems toward such subjects as his aunt’s funeral, the landscape, and his relations with his wife and children.”

Some of the best poems in the book are rather straightforward pieces—”This bread break,” “The hand that signed the paper,” “And death shall have no dominion”—but others, such as “I, in my intricate image,” are as involved and abstruse as the poems of the earlier volume. Derek Stanford noted that still “there are traces of doubt, questioning, and despair in many of these pieces.” Thomas, however, chose to place the optimistic “And death shall have no dominion” at the end of the volume. This poem has always been one of Thomas’s most popular works, perhaps because, as Clark Emery noted, it was “published in a time when notes of affirmation—philosophical, political, or otherwise—did not resound among intelligent liberal humanists, [and thus] it answered an emotional need. … It affirmed without sentimentalizing; it expressed a faith without theologizing.”

The “Altarwise by owl-light” poems as well as “And death shall have no dominion” raise questions concerning the extent to which Dylan Thomas can be called a religious writer. In an essay for A Casebook on Dylan Thomas, W.S. Merwin was one of the first to deal with this issue; he found Thomas to be a religious writer because he was a “celebrator in the ritual sense: a maker and performer of a rite … . That which he celebrates is creation, and more particularly the human condition.” However, the positions on this issue can be—and have been—as various as the definitions of what constitutes a religious outlook. At one end of the scale, critics do not dispute that Thomas used religious imagery in his poetry; at the other end, critics generally agree that, at least during certain periods of his creative life, Thomas’s vision was not that of any orthodox religious system. The range of interpretations was summarized by R.B. Kershner Jr., in Dylan Thomas: The Poet and His Critics: “He has been called a pagan, a mystic, and a humanistic agnostic; his God has been identified with Nature, Sex, Love, Process, the Life Force, and with Thomas himself.”

On July 11, 1937, Thomas married dancer Caitlin Macnamara; they were penniless and lacked the blessings of their parents. After spending some time with each of their reluctant families, they moved to a borrowed house in Laugharne, Wales. This fishing village became their permanent address, though they lived in many temporary dwellings in England and Wales through the war years and after, until Thomas’s death in 1953. The borrowing of houses and money became recurring events in their married life together. Korg associated these external circumstances in the poet’s life with his artistic development: “Thomas’s time of settling in Laugharne coincides roughly with the period when his poetry began to turn outward; his love for Caitlin, the birth of his first child, Llewellyn, responses to the Welsh countryside and its people, and ultimately events of the war began to enter his poetry as visible subjects.”

Thomas’s third book, The Map of Love, appeared in August 1939, a month before war officially broke out in Europe. It comprised a strange union of 16 poems and seven stories, the stories having been previously published in periodicals. The volume was a commercial failure, perhaps because of the war. Ferris reported that “the book was respectfully and sometimes warmly reviewed, with a few dissenters”; yet these works of Thomas’s middle period were his least successful.

In sharp contrast to the stories in The Map of Love are those published the following year, 1940, in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog. Thomas claimed in a letter to Vernon Watkins that he “kept the flippant title for—as the publishers advise—money-making reasons.” These Thomas stories are different from the earlier ones in their particularity of character and place, their straightforward plot lines, and their relevance to Thomas’s childhood in Wales. Thomas wrote to Watkins in August 1939: “I’ve been busy over stories, pot-boiling stories for a book, semi-autobiographical, to be finished by Christmas.” Reviews of the book were mixed, and it didn’t sell well at the time, though it later became enormously popular.

Thomas avoided service in World War II because of medical problems; he had also considered filing for conscientious objector status. He was able to secure employment during the war years writing documentary scripts for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). While he considered it hack work, it provided the first regular income since his newspaper days and also allowed him to spend a good deal of time in London pubs. This pragmatic writing was the beginning of a career that Thomas pursued until his death; it did not, however, replace what he considered his more important work, the writing of poems. In addition to the documentaries, he wrote radio scripts and eventually screenplays for feature films. Though his income from these activities was moderate, it did not allow him relief from debt or borrowing.

In 1940 Thomas began writing Adventures in the Skin Trade, a novel that he never completed, though its first section was subsequently published. It is essentially the time-honored story of a country boy in the big city. Annis Pratt commented that Thomas intended the story to be “a series of ‘adventures’ in which the hero’s ‘skins’ would be stripped off one by one like a snake’s until he was left in a kind of quintessential nakedness to face the world.”

Thomas’s work next saw publication in a 1946 poetry collection, Deaths and Entrances, containing many of his most famous poems. This volume included such works as “A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London,” “Poem in October,” “The Hunchback in the Park,” and “Fern Hill.” Deaths and Entrances was an instant success. Ferris noted that 3000 sold in the first month after its publication and that the publisher, Dent, ordered a reprint of the same number.

H. Jones, in his Dylan Thomas, declared the volume to be the core of Thomas’s achievement. The poems of Deaths and Entrances, while still provoking arguments about interpretation, are less compressed and less obscure than the earlier works. Some, like “Fern Hill,” illustrate an almost Wordsworthian harmony with nature and other human beings but not without the sense of the inexorability of time. As Jacob Korg said of these poems, “the figures and landscapes have a new solidity, a new self-sufficiency, and the dialectic vision no longer penetrates them as though they were no more than windows opening on a timeless universe.”

While these later poems in Deaths and Entrances are less compressed than the earlier ones, they reveal no less verbal facility or less concern for what is generally called poetic style. Thomas was always a highly individual stylist. Sound was as important as sense in his poems—some would even say more important. He made ample use of alliteration, assonance, internal rhyme, and approximate rhyme. In The Craft and Art of Dylan Thomas, William T. Moynihan describes his rhythm as “accentual syllabic”: “its stress pattern generally sounds as though it is iambic, but this very justifiable assumption cannot always be borne out by traditional scansion. Thomas may, in fact, have depended upon an iambic expectancy, as he varied his rhythms beyond any customary iambic formulation and then—by completely unprecedented innovations—created his own rhythm, which is very close to iambic.”

By the time of the publication of Deaths and Entrances Thomas had become a living legend. Through his very popular readings and recordings of his own work, this writer of sometimes obscure poetry gained mass appeal. For many, he came to represent the figure of the bard, the singer of songs to his people. Kershner asserted that Thomas “became the wild man from the West, the Celtic bard with the magical rant, a folk figure with racial access to roots of experience which more civilized Londoners lacked.” His drinking, his democratic tendencies, and the frank sexual imagery of his poetry made him the focal point of an ill-defined artistic rebellion.

In 1949 Thomas and his family moved to the Boat House of Laugharne, Wales, a house provided for them by one of Thomas’s benefactors, Margaret Taylor. For the last four years of his life he moved between this dwelling and the United States, where he went on four separate tours to read his poetry and receive the adulation of the American public. The often-sordid accounts of these tours are provided in John Malcolm Brinnin’s Dylan Thomas in America. Thomas’s last separate volume of poetry before the Collected Poems, 1934-1952 was Country Sleep, published by New Directions in the United States in 1952. As originally published, this book contained six of the poet’s most accomplished works: “Over Sir John’s Hill,” “Poem on his Birthday,” “Do not go gentle into that good night,” “Lament,” “In the white giant’s thigh,” and “In country sleep.” Concerning this volume, Rushworth M. Kidder commented in Dylan Thomas: The Country of the Spirit that “the fact of physical death seems to present itself to the poet as something more than distant event. … These poems come to terms with death through a form of worship: not propitiatory worship of Death as deity, but worship of a higher Deity by whose power all things, including death, are controlled.”

Several of Thomas’s film scripts have been published, including The Doctor and the Devils and The Beach at Falesa. Neither of these was produced, but they gave Thomas the opportunity to develop his dramatic skills. These skills culminated in his radio play, Under Milk Wood, written over a long period of time and frantically revised in America during the last months of his life. The play grew out of the story “Quite Early One Morning,” which was broadcast by the BBC in 1945. Under Milk Wood is set in a small Welsh town called Llareggub and covers one day in the lives of its provincial characters. Raymond Williams, in an essay for Dylan Thomas: A Collection of Critical Essays, said that Under Milk Wood is “the retained extravagance of an adolescent’s imaginings. Yet it moves, at its best, into a genuine involvement, an actual sharing of experience, which is not the least of its dramatic virtues.” Thomas read the play as a solo performance in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on May 3, 1953; the first group reading was on May 14. The following November, Dylan Thomas died in New York of ailments complicated by alcohol and drug abuse.