 Driven by Dylan On February 22, 1952, Welsh poet and writer Dylan Thomas began recording A Child’s Christmas in Wales. It was a remarkable moment in several ways. He was the first to record for a new record label called Caedmon (named for the first poet to write in the native language of Old England), which had been started by two 22-year-old recent college graduates, Marianne Roney and Barbara Cohen. This recording was the first of what has since become the spoken-word industry. And Thomas made it to this session, having missed his first scheduled one when he saw the White Horse Tavern from his taxi window, only because the women made sure a messenger accompanied him to the second appointment. (Plus, he had been promised a fee of $500.) Unfortunately, the problems were not at an end. Thomas began the session with “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.” Mr. Bartok [the recording engineer] had perhaps expected a quavery poet’s voice, but instead he got a French horn. After some consideration, he adjusted the microphone for a symphonic recording to accommodate Thomas’s sonorous voice. Thomas continued reading “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” and a handful of other poems. And then came the realization that, beautiful as they were, the poems were long enough for only one side of a long-playing records. How could they fill out the record? What else had he written? And where, on Washington’s birthday, would they find it? Thomas and such sober practical considerations were not very close kin. However, it was that instinct in me who are fond of directing women as a gender, but incapable of dealing with one . . . in a state of panic, which quickly focused Thomas’s attention causing him to remember he had recently sold a story to Harper’s Bazaar. Ten or twelve phone calls later, the appropriate back issue of Harper’s Bazaar found its way to Steinway Hall. And that story was A Child’s Christmas in Wales. The recording of that story opens HarperCollins’ The Caedmon Collection, an incredible unabridged 11-CD collection, the “book” I am currently enjoying. I chose it because I was feeling desperate to get out of the darkness in which I felt I had been dwelling with my January reading. And it’s proven to be exactly what I needed. I’ve not read poetry, certainly not in any discernible way. My collection includes fewer than ten books of poems and books about poetry, though I count my 1821 six-volume set of Lord Byron’s work as one. Having attended private grammar and high schools, I must have been exposed to poetry, but aside from the year spent on The Canterbury Tales I cannot recall a single experience. So why I did I turn to Dylan Thomas, a man who during his four reading tours of America did much to popularize poetry reading as a new medium for the art? He was naturally theatrical with a sonorous voice that he could work at will, was temperamental and flamboyant, and had something few other poets had: groupies. But it’s the voice that makes listening to him read his own work (and that of poets, dramatists, and writers he admired) so enthralling. For five days I have listened—at work and at home, while writing and while just sitting. I cannot make out all the words, but the resonation and depth of his voice—dipping, slowing, moving briskly, harsh, sweet—thrills me. I listen and listen again, hearing his poems and his stories as he heard them and as he wishes me to hear them. Not everyone likes audio books, but I have been a long-time fan. Few authors should read their own work—most don’t have voices good enough—but two I like are Simon Winchester and Bill Bryson. Dylan Thomas, however, is in a class by himself. It takes a special reader to add power to the written word. Dickens, by all accounts, was a master of it, and it’s a shame recordings were not available during his time. But I am grateful that Thomas took the time (or perhaps I should say the bribe) to record his writing. I’ve had the fortuity to hear good poetry readings before. For me, those bring the poetry alive in ways that reading the poems does not. It’s not necessarily better, but I remember the experience of feeling the poet interact with her work. This week with Dylan Thomas has been an extraordinary reading event for me. Beyond achieving my goal, I gained an appreciation for this master poet, and I did so through his own voice. And even though it took a bribe to get him to do it, well, Marianne Roney, Barbara Cohen and I got the better part of the deal. Upcoming Book Festivals: The Pub House:
Imaging Books & Reading:
Of Interest: Until next week, read well, read often and read on!
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