Dylan Thomas

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.

—From Fern Hill, first published in Deaths and Entrances

Dylan Thomas (1914-1953) was a Welsh poet and writer who was very popular in his time. His poetry is notable for its tendency towards obscurity, its gothic, surreal tone and its rhythmic, infectious cadence. His most famous poem is Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.

List of works:

• Collected Poems: Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
• A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog: Following the model of James Joyce's Dubliners (although Thomas insisted he never read a word of Joyce), this autobiographical collection of short stories tracks an Author Avatar as he navigates the turmoil of adolescence and disappointment.
• Quite Early One Morning: A posthumous collection of fictions, interviews and criticisms. Includes what is arguably his greatest story, "A Child's Christmas in Wales".
• Under Milk Wood: A humorous play, it accounts a strange day in a coastal Welsh town.
• Adventures in the Skin Trade: A slightly surreal novella about a young man trying to become a publisher in Cardiff.
• Rebecca's Daughters: A radio play about the eponymous criminal group.

Dylan Thomas is the Trope Namer for:

• Do Not Go Gentle

Dylan Thomas provides examples of the following tropes:

• The Alcoholic: Drink would eventually become his undoing.
• Infant Immortality: Purposefully averted. A handful of his poems (A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London and The Conversation of Prayer, to name a couple) deal with dead children.
• Religious Horror: Much of his poetry is grotesque, an effect he achieved by juxtaposing religious imagery with descriptions of filth and decay.
• Slap Slap Kiss: He would sometimes have to restrain his wife Caitlin when she grew rowdy at social functions.