My mom passed away a year ago today. Oh, how she loved to read! One of the greatest gifts she gave her children was a love of books. I don't know if I ever gave her these words from Dylan Thomas, but it's never too late. I'm giving them to her today.
This is from the preface to The Poems of Dylan Thomas — an essay called "Notes on the Art of Poetry." The "poem" is often found online in an edited form, but it originated in Thomas's response to a college student who, in 1951, asked him five questions about poetry:
"My first, and greatest, liberty was that of being able to read everything and anything I cared to. I read indiscriminately, and with my eyes hanging out. I could never have dreamt that there were such goings-on in the world between the covers of books, such sandstorms and ice blasts of words, such slashing of humbug, and humbug, too, such staggering peace, such enormous laughter, such and so many blinding bright lights breaking across the just-awaking wits and splashing all over the pages in a million bits and pieces all of which were words, words, words, and each of which was alive forever in its own delight and glory and oddity and light."
And here's a lovely clip, that I think my mom would love, of Sean Bean reading the shortened version:
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Join Marcie Flinchum Atkins for the Poetry Friday round-up this week, and for plenty of other bookish and poetical news.
Photo courtesy of EliFrancis at Pixabay.
