Dylan Thomas and creating a new Language - GC
These are two verses from possibly my favourite poem; ‘Fern Hill’ by Dylan Thomas.
All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.
And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.
https://poets.org/poem/fern-hill.
I first heard it read by Richard Burton on a vinyl recording in 1979. I was at Teachers Training College and had fallen in love with Joanne King, who was as cultured as I was naive of things of artistic beauty. But I was thirsty for it, and that reading in her kitchen on a little portable record player struck such a chord in me that 14 years later I named my eldest son after the poet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mM39ChglcYc
It’s almost as if Richard Burton (also a Welshman) is reading in a foreign language – and it doesn’t matter; this is poetry that is music.
But it’s what Dylan Thomas does with language that is so astounding. Fern Hill was his Aunt’s farm that he visited as a child, and on one level this is simply a poem based on the childhood memory of the farm. But by combining imagery of creation, for example the whole poem works as much as a paean to the passing of childhood.
I have chosen two verses to demonstrate what Dylan Thomas does that creates such new ways of describing things – and in a way that links to some of the most fundamental symbols and imagery of being human in the natural world.
All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house,
Not ‘all the day long’, but ‘all the sun long’. And it doesn’t matter what was ‘running’; it’s the sense of motion.
Not smoke from the chimneys, but ‘tunes’.
It was ‘air and playing, lovely and watery’. What a description of play – and play in nature; a sense of lightness.
‘Fire green as grass’ Green feels new… young, like green growth. How audacious to link these things together – and without making literal sense it creates something strangely recognisable.
‘Nightly’ under the stars. Not just under the stars
‘All the moon long’ Instead of all night long
‘Blessed among stables’. Blessed / stables … He’s describing the night on the farm – but with such strong religious imagery
‘Horses flashing int the dark’. I imagine horses in the stables, in the dark, and just catching glimpses of them as they move
(Nightjars are birds and ricks are carts).
It’s the next verse, though, that is genius.
It’s the next morning, the farm is covered with dew, the cock is crowing and it is all ‘shining’.
And then he takes us back to Adam (and maiden), to what seems to be a comparison to creation;
To the ‘birth of that simple light’
In the first, spinning place (spinning!!) the ‘spellbound’ horses walk (spellbound by the wonder of creation – of that first (comma) spinning place)
Walking warm (not just walking, but walking ‘warm’)
Out of the whinnying green stable (holy fuck!!!!! Whinnying green stable)
On to the fields of praise.
He’s transported us to the wonder of the light of the first morning of creation and into the creation myth – and yet kept us so firmly locked in the imagery of the farm and of nature; and by his refusal to use common metaphors or tired similes he has brought something completely new to the language.
Hey Jacob. Talk about disrupting the creative process….
-Geoff
