Radu Vancu, Dylan Thomas. Veriga-lipsă între oraculari și confesivi
Dylan Thomas. The Missing Link between the Oraculars and the Confessionals
The present study is interested in the work of Dylan Thomas, as compared with that of his close friend, John Berryman. Born in the same year (1914), they are now the iconic poets of two successive generations – the modernist one, in what concerns Thomas, and the confessional one, in Berryman’s case. The study shows that, even though Thomas is usually seen as a typical high modernist, with an oracular tone and a proclivity for metaphorical hermeticism, he has nevertheless some marks in his poetry proving an adherence to the confessional poetics – as synthesised by his famous programmatic line „Man be my metaphor”. Probably due to his early death, Tomas has never become a truly confessional poet (and there are serious doubts that he would have ever become one for real); but, as both a pre-confessional poet and a high modernist one, he is the missing link between the two poetical generations.
Keywords: history of modern Anglo-Saxon poetry, high modernism, confessional poetics, Dylan Thomas, John Berryman
- Bewley, Marius, Some Aspects of Modern American Poetry, in Modern Poetry. Essays in Criticism, edited by John Hollander, Oxford University Press, 1968
- Budd, Malcolm, Music and the Emotions. The Philosophical Theories, Routledge, London and New York, 2003
- Dickey, James, From Babel to Byzantium: Poets and Poetry Now, New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1968
- Dinger, Ed, Seems Like Old Times, Iowa University Press, 1986
- Donelan, James H, Poetry and the Romantic Musical Aesthetic, Cambridge University Press, 2008
- Fauchereau, Serge, Introducere în poezia americană modernă, Bucureşti, Minerva, 1974
- Haffenden, John, The Life of John Berryman, Routledge, Ark Paperbacks, 1982
- Mariani, Paul, Dream Song: The Life of John Berryman, Paragon House, 1992
- Levinson, Jerrold, Music, Art, & Metaphysics. Essays in Philosophical Aesthetics, Oxford University Press, 2011
- Martz, William J., John Berryman, University of Minnesota Press, 1969
- Phillips, Robert, The Confessional Poets, with a preface by Harry T. Moore, Southern Illinois University Press, 1973
- Rosenthal, M.L., Our Life in Poetry. Selected Essays and Reviews, Persea Books, New York, 1991
- Stitt, Peter A., The Art of Poetry No. 16, interview with John Berryman, in The Paris Review, no. 53, 1972
- Thomas, Caitlin, My Life with Dylan Thomas. Double Drink Story, with an afterword by Francesco Fazio, Virago Press, 2008
- Thomas, Dylan, Selected Poems, edited with an introduction and notes by Walford Davies, 2000
