The Irish Dylan Thomas: versions and influences

Abstract

This essay considers the impact of Dylan Thomas on a number of Irish poets and how Thomas has been represented in the critical observations and writings of these poets. It notes how for Patrick Kavanagh the reputation of Dylan Thomas might have seemed a Welsh example of a kind of poetic posturing (for which the Kavanagh deployed the term ‘the bucklep’) that he associated with the Irish poets W.R. Rodgers and F.R. Higgins. By contrast Louis MacNeice respected these poets as he admired and defended Thomas' poetry. His own work during the Second World War was influenced by that of Thomas especially in its existential humanism which shared the Welsh poet's proccupatiuon with death as a theme. Following Thomas' own death MacNeice became a critical advocate for Thomas' verse, celebrating the poet as a skilled craftsman. The essay concludes by considering Thomas's reputation as it is assessed by Seamus Heaney and Derek Mahon. It notes how Heaney's reading is affected by a frame of reference drawn from Kavanaagh's writings while by contrast Mahon supplies a more enthusiastic critique, especially to Thomas' later work, which is seen to explore female sexuality, mature love and marriage.

Keywords:

• Dylan Thomas
• the bucklep
• death
• craftsman
• sexuality

Notes

 1. Cited in Quinn, Patrick Kavanagh: Born-again Romantic, 145.

 2. Quinn, Patrick Kavanagh: Born-again Romantic, 145

 3. Cited in Quinn, Patrick Kavanagh: A Biography, 294.

 4. Quinn, Patrick Kavanagh: A Biography, 307.

 5. Patrick Kavanagh, ‘A Goat Tethered Outside the Bailey’, in Quinn, Patrick Kavanagh: A Poet's Country, 238.

 6. Kavanagh, ‘A Goat’, 241.

 7. Kavanagh, ‘Paris in Aran’, in Quinn, Patrick Kavanagh: A Poet's Country, 189.

 8. Kavanagh, ‘Paris in Aran’, in Quinn, Patrick Kavanagh: A Poet's Country, 190.

 9. Kavanagh, ‘Paris in Aran’, in Quinn, Patrick Kavanagh: A Poet's Country

10. MacNeice, Collected Poems, 399.

11. MacNeice, Collected Poems, 455.

12. MacNeice, Collected Poems, 380.

13. MacNeice, Collected Poems, 381–2.

14. MacNeice, Collected Poems, 394.

15. MacNeice, Collected Poems, 397.

16. MacNeice, Collected Poems, 456.

17. MacNeice, Collected Poems, 462.

18. MacNeice, Collected Poems, 463.

19. MacNeice, Collected Poems, 462.

20. MacNeice, Collected Poems, 464.

21. MacNeice, The Poetry of W.B. Yeats, xviii.

22. Heuser, Selected Prose of Louis MacNeice, 136.

23. Heuser, Selected Prose of Louis MacNeice, 142.

24. Phillips, ‘“Death is All Metaphor”’, 125.

25. Ferris, Dylan Thomas: The Biography, 156.

26. Ferris, Dylan Thomas: The Collected Letters, 328.

27. See Hedli MacNeice, ‘The Story of the House that Louis Built’, 9–10. The other poet was W.R. Rodgers.

28. See MacNeice, ‘I Remember Dylan Thomas’, 195.

29. See MacNeice, ‘Remembering Dylan Thomas’, 140.

30. See Marsack, The Cave of Making, 113–14.

31. Herbert's poem ‘Providence’ speaks of the man who withholds praise of God as one who ‘doth commit a world of sin in one’. MacNeice's poem prays ‘forgive me/For the sins that in me the world shall commit’ (Collected Poems, 193).

32. Goodby and Wigginton, ‘Introduction’, in Dylan Thomas, 16.

33. MacNeice, Selected Literary Criticism, 183.

34. MacNeice, Selected Literary Criticism, 184, 185, 187, 199, 202.

35. MacNeice, Selected Literary Criticism, 188, 202.

36. MacNeice, Selected Literary Criticism, 183.

37. Heaney, ‘Dylan the Durable?’, 124.

38. Heaney, ‘Dylan the Durable?’, 124–5.

39. Longley, Tuppenny Stung, 36.

40. Longley, Tuppenny Stung, 36

41. Heaney, ‘Dylan the Durable?’, 135.

42. Heaney, ‘Dylan the Durable?’, 133.

43. Heaney, ‘Dylan the Durable?’, 142.

44. Heaney, ‘Dylan the Durable?’

45. Cited Goodby, in Goodby and Wigginton, Dylan Thomas, 198.

46. Heaney, ‘Dylan the Durable?’, 137.

47. See Clark, The Ulster Renaissance, 20–1.

48. Mahon, ‘Introduction’, vii.

49. Mahon, ‘Introduction’, xii, xiv.

50. Mahon, ‘Introduction’, xv.

51. Mahon, ‘Introduction’, xvii, xvi.