Dylan Thomas: Deaths And Entrances

Dylan Thomas' fourth poetry collection was first published in 1946. Heavily influenced by the impact of the Second World War, the writer characteristically relates the universal to the intensely personal and also examines his own role as a poetic voice during such times.

The poem The Hunchback In The Park was the last poem to be drawn from his youthful notebooks which he sold in an attempt to force himself to rely solely on fresh inspiration.

Thomas celebrates his career with bravado in Once Below A Time, describing how "the boy of common thread" shot up through "the lubber crust of Wales". But this bright star from the backwater is humbled by his own desire to act as a voice for humanity. The poem In My Craft Or Sullen Art expresses the paradoxical of writing for the lovers who pay him "no praise or wages" for his efforts.

But Thomas continues to write for and about people, and in this collection he relates the universal experience of war to specific characters or to people he knows. Lie Still, Sleep Becalmed is addressed to his father who, "with the wound In the throat", suffered with throat cancer. It is also an empathic communication with "the voices of all the drowned", the enormous volume of wartime casualties.

Similarly, Ceremony After A Fire Raid is an elegy for a "child of a few hours" who has been killed in the bombing. Associated with Christ, she is a focus for the grief and the horror of war experienced by everyone. The poem becomes an examination of the entire history of human faith and its survival in the midst of tragedy. But it does end with "Glory glory glory" and the promise of rebirth and renewal in "the ultimate kingdom of genesis' thunder".

While many of the poems in Deaths And Entrances are not explicitly about the war, it has an influence on virtually all of the pieces which appear in this collection. The horrific reality of war forces Thomas to reassess, and to some extent justify to himself, his occupation as a poet. He also needs to examine man's intimate relationship with God and the role of religion in a devastated world.