Show description

But how are we to reconcile Olson's explanation with Thomas's view of his work? " 38 Moreover, images were not as important as sounds. To someone who asked whether he wrote for the eye or the ear, he said, for the ear. 39 However, words do mean something, and while one may not want to go as far as Olson it is not possible to read a poem by Dylan Thomas without perceiving that an argument of some sort is going on-though it may be hard to disentangle and no two critics are likely to agree what it is.

But he would like to mix in poems by some British contemporaries. 89 Caitlin would not be coming with him. Their third child, Colm, had been born in the summer of 1949 and she had not been well since. New York in February would not be suitable-he was thinking of her going to Italy instead for three months. Money, as usual, was the difficulty. "I'm having a tough time here at the moment," he wrote James Laughlin. "I want to write only poems, but that can't be. Never have I wanted to more. But debts are battering at me.

Shortly after the birth of Caitlin, his third daughter and fourth child, he went away with a married woman and never came back. Mrs. Macnamara moved from place to place with the children. She had very little money but maintained the standards of a gentlewoman, holding that it was vulgar to pay bills or to worry about paying them at all. Caitlin grew up doing much as she pleased. She had good looks, her father's blue eyes and curly, golden hair, and she is said to have been witty. She had a passion for dancing and when she was seventeen or eighteen worked as a chorus girl at the Palladium.