John Goodby's sequence of sixty-seven sonnets read as a tribute to Ted Berrigan (1934-1983), the author of the masterly The Sonnets(1964), updated and transplanted from New York City to South Wales. Irreverent and at times shamelessly erotic, Goodby adopts Berrigan's unique collage style in these poems, repeating and refiguring lines of the ongoing work so that unexpected shifts in meaning occur in each new context, generating a kind of Fast Show meets Jules Laforgue effect. In these poems 'the existence of long-lasting emotions is something of a puzzle' as we enjoy mysterious encounters with...

A collection of essays on one of the twentieth century's most popular yet critically neglected authors, this book explores the full range of Thomas's work. It uses approaches - such as marxism, feminism and deconstruction - previously neglected by critics and focuses on his complex relationships with surrealism, modernism, Wales, popular culture, the USA and his own contemporaries. In doing so, it restores Thomas to his rightful place as a major twentieth century literary figure and cultural icon.

Published in time for the centenary of the poet's birth in 1914, The Poetry of Dylan Thomas is the first book to read Dylan Thomas's poetry through the lens of modern critical theory, bringing theories of modernism, the body, gender, the carnivalesque, language, hybridity, performance, and the pastoral to bear on his works. John Goodby calls for a fundamental reappraisal not only of Thomas's poetry but of the ways in which post-Waste Land British poetry has been read over recent decades. For the first time, Dylan Thomas's poetry and life as a poet are brought fully into...