Dylan Thomas was a versatile genius and within a brief span of his poetic career he was recognized one of the great modern poets. His first poems were published in 1934 and with the publication of these poems he got a niche among the great modern poets. His work delights a natural forces, the life of nature, the country side, the forces of birth, sex death and the powerful feelings that they create. one of his important poems was written to his father. Evidently, Dylan Thomas wrote not for fame, money or influence but to touch and show people of their feelings. He knew well that the forces of life are stronger than the forces of art. Dylan Thomas also wrote the Play, Under Milk wood, which was first performed on Radio and has ever since been acted on stage.
Dylan Thomas became a sort of living myth and his prose shows the surrealist(type of movement) influences. The poetry of Dylan Thomas made an immediate impression because of the intrinsic qualities of his language. Remarkably, his language was highly symbolic and so rich and strange that though unintelligible yet it had almost hypnotic power which was enhanced by the poetic command over sound and rhythm. Many of his poems, though they are great poetry have not been appreciated by quite a number of readers.
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Nonetheless, the poems have appreciated by Dylan Thomas himself. From the Wells Chapel of Boyhood, he had observed the Bible and had also come to know Freud. The biblical and sexual images were wonderfully interwoven in his poems. Dylan used his poetry as a means of discovery himself. And no wonder, he was caught in the fever of adolescence and talked passionately to himself in the restless desire to cope with his sense of scene to conquer his fear and to reassure himself in his feelings of isolation. He brooded on the dark mystery of sex and was concerned mainly with direct and indirect sex influence of love, growth and religion. His works woed something to Hopkins and Joyce. But his verbal inventiveness lacks their assurance. Some of the eighteen poems published in 1934 are intelligible. He also wrote religious sonnets in which he presented the powerful interpretation of the life of Christ in sexual terms replete with symbols and puns.
The map of love (1939) consists mainly of surrealist story that clearly suggest Dylan Thomas endeavour to write poems which would be like music in its drift of images. His mastery of verbal melody grew rapidly which could be felt in his poems. At first Dylan Thomas built up his poems phase by phase with much epithets and parallelism between line and line. This gave a ponderous effect which oddly enough influenced his followers more than his later rhythmical freedom. But in Death and entrances (1946) the image mosaic produces a fragmentary effect. In his another poem, the marriage of a virgin, The winter play of image with the least of advancing emotion is discernible.
Although Dylan Thomas was influenced by surrealism, his poetry surprises us by an excess which found prodigiously in his poems. He is sexual and romantic and is concerned primarily with the impact of images upon the readers subconscious. Dylan Thomas has contributed a lot to the English poetry. Evidently, his poetry manifests his sound and fury and it is surfeit with human qualities unquestionably, Dylan Thomas is the dominating poet of the 20th century and he is admired by a number of connoisseurs of art for ushering in a new technique and style.
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