Dylan Thomas

A couple of weeks ago I wrote an entry with a garbled title using the word "sullen". A reader emailed to ask "Why did you call it 'sullen'?" Actually, I was alluding to a poem by Dylan Thomas, "In My Craft or Sullen Art". In 1971 I had cut out a copy of that poem from a women's magazine and kept it with my writing or poetry papers, sometimes posted on a bulletin board.

He expressed what I felt so well:

In my craft or sullen art
Exercised in the still night
When only the moon rages
And the lovers lie abed
With all their griefs in their arms,
I labour by singing light
Not for ambition or bread
Or the strut and trade of charms
On the ivory stages
But for the common wages
Of their most secret heart.
Not for the proud man apart
From the raging moon I write
On these spindrift pages
Not for the towering dead
With their nightingales and psalms
But for the lovers, their arms
Round the griefs of the ages,
Who pay no praise or wages
Nor heed my craft of sullen art.

"these sprindrift pages" indeed

Listen to this article