Where Have the Old Words Got Me?

Explications of Dylan Thomas’s Collected Poems

Ralph Maud

“An invaluable resource, crammed with diary and letter extracts, and fascinating details for both the literary specialist and the interested browser” English in Wales

Dylan Thomas is the one of the most well-known poets of the twentieth century, yet much of his poetry is considered obscure and difficult, and readers tend to concentrate on those poems that can be most easily understood.

Where Have the Old Words Got Me? is the authoritative reader’s guide to Dylan Thomas’s Collected Poems, 1934–1953, consisting of detailed explications of every poem in the collection. Working from the principle that Thomas’s biography offers the key to his poetry, Ralph Maud integrates critical commentary with biographical detail to elucidate Thomas’s works. His aim is to allow readers to better understand the complex imagery and narrative movements of Thomas’s work and to provide the basis for renewed critical investigation of the poetry.

Ralph Maud is a world-renowned expert on Dylan Thomas, as well as the co-editor of the standard edition of Thomas’s work. Where Have the Old Words Got Me? is the culmination of his lifetime’s study of Thomas’s poetry. It will be essential reading for all those interested in the life and works of Dylan Thomas, from academic specialists to the general reader.

Ralph Maud is Emeritus Professor of English and Associate of the Institute for the Humanities at Simon Fraser University, British Columbia. He has edited much of Dylan Thomas’s work, including The Notebook Poems, 1930–1934 and The Broadcasts, and is co-editor, with Walford Davies, of The Collected Poems, 1934–1953 and Under Milk Wood. In addition to a critical study, Entrances to Dylan Thomas’s Poetry (1963), he is also the author of Charles Olson’s Reading (1996) and the editor of The Selected Letters of Charles Olson (2000).