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September 2, 2009

Prynhawn Da, Y’all!

Filed under: Books — Miss Plumcake @ 12:54 pm

Well played mdegraffen, who identified the Daily Kick’s title “Starless and Bible Black” as being from the first sentence of Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood.

She didn’t extrapolate, but Dylan Thomas is to Wales what Robert Burns is to Scotland and what Shakespeare, Bacon, Marlowe that guy with the plays is to England.

If you’re unfamiliar with Dylan Thomas’ body of work you need to get on the stick.

Most everyone has heard how Robert Zimmerman changed his name to Bob Dylan in the Welsh poet’s honor and they probably know about his poem Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night, written for his dying father as the most often dragged-out example of a villanelle, but I can’t say it’s my favorite.

No, for my money it’s Under Milk Wood a voice play most famously starring my first and third imaginary husband Welshman Richard Burton as the First Voice.

Read it by all means but as with all Thomas, LISTEN to it if you can.

The definitive recording of Under Milk Wood is available for a listen on Youtube (here’s the first part)

And you MUST hear Thomas himself in his beautiful Cymraic (say “CUM-hrake“) lilt read his timeless reminiscence of nativities past in “A Child’s Christmas in Wales

2 Comments

  1. I’m partial to “Fern Hill.”

    Comment by Violet — September 3, 2009 @ 10:30 pm

  2. Marvelous.

    Though the words seem so inherently musical they seem to sing themselves, when Burton declaims them, they become truly symphonic.

    What a treat.

    Comment by Mr. Henry — September 5, 2009 @ 8:02 pm

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