I was always struck by the imagery of his "A Child's Christmas in Wales," a prose work, I know, but indicative of Thomas' talent and power.

"Years and years ago, when I was a boy, when there were wolves in Wales, and birds the color of red-flannel petticoats whisked past the harp-shaped hills, when we sang and wallowed all night and day in caves that smelt like Sunday afternoons in damp front farmhouse parlors, and we chased, with the jawbones of deacons, the English and the bears, before the motor car, before the wheel, before the duchess-faced horse, when we rode the daft and happy hills bareback, it snowed and it snowed. But here a small boy says: 'It snowed last year, too. I made a snowman and my brother knocked it down and I knocked my brother down and then we had tea.'"

Scalding, withering writer at his best, and pretty decent at his worst.

I've always loved his line (not from his poetry) that an alcoholic is someone you don't like who drinks as much as you do.

He did not go gently into any good night. . .

The boy stood on the burning deck Dylan's first poem..... love the part about the sausages,...got to be a 5 cos he was Welsh..........

Great lyrical poet, perhaps the greatest of his time. "Do Not Go Gentle" is the finest villanelle of the 20th century and the two other trademark pieces, "The Force That Through The Green Fuse," and "And Death Shall Have No Dominion" are very powerful, beautiful works, as well. "Under Milk Wood" is positively charming. Although I admit that sometimes what this guy says is beyond me, that I really can't get what he's going on about, I have to truly admire the masculine surge of his language.

Glad to see the most famous Welsh poet,born just a street away from me in Swansea,included.Like Lorie(Finlore-see below),i too,love the poetic prose in his delightful autobiographical short A Child's Christmas in Wales(The Outing's another little gem),and the descriptions and characters in Under Milk Wood.In fact it's convinced me to give 5 stars after all-i was wavering a little,since on recent readings it's become clearer that only a dozen or so of Dylan's poems are really worthy of his reputation-too many are a little juvenile in meaning(hardly too surprising as a high percentage of his output came when he was a precocious youngster).I'd like to lay to rest a common misconception about him; yes,he certainly did enjoy a drink(in fact the drink,and medical failings, killed him in New York when he was only 39),and he was a notorious scrounger,but his poems were not arrived at by some lightning strokes of genius-they are extremely carefully crafted in their sound effects,rhythm and rhyming patterns.His poetry,as i said,is inconsistent,but when it's good...!Do not go Gentle,And Death shall have no Dominion,and The Force that through the Green Fuse are extremely fine,while Poem in October and Fern Hill are utterly brilliant,definitely desert island/top 10 stuff,a part of my life and flowing through me;"Now as i was young and easy under the apple boughs/About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green...".Oh and by the way,a couple of former U.S Presidents happen to be big fans.On Dylan's gravestone at Laugharne,where he lived in a lovely estuary overlooking the sea,are the words:"Oh,as i was young and easy in the mercy of his means,/Time held me green and dying/Though i sang in my chains like the sea".Shame on me for my infidelity in entertaining less than 5 stars;writing this has brought a lump to my throat,i feel choked,i hadn't realised he meant so much to me-my youth,my memories,my identity,my land,my green country.

"Do not go gentle into that good night" may be his best known poem (it even inspired me to write my own, in rebuttal!), but it is only a part of what makes him one of the better-known poets. I love his use of language in poems like "Under Milk Wood" ("It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless / and bible-black") and in the classic "A Child's Christmas in Wales" ("All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged, fish-freezing waves,").