Product Description

A collection of R.S. Thomas's poems, published to mark his 80th birthday. Many of his themes are prophetic to issues such as technology and our use of it to destroy the natural world; and the search for personal and national identity and for meaning in human life.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #70199 in Books
• Published on: 2000-10-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 560 pages

From the Publisher
A wonderful collection of the poetic works of the late R.S. Thomas with a new foreword by Poet Laureate Andrew Motion. “Read these poems” Stephen Spender. “This is a book I’ve been waiting for” Ted Hughes.

About the Author
R. S. Thomas was born in 1913. He has won numerous awards for his poetry, including the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 1964. His autobiography, Neb, is published by J. M. Dent in September 1995. He died in 2000.

Customer Reviews

Wales and Christianity
Welshman R.S. Thomas is the author of some of the most memorable religious poetry of the century. As a clergyman in rural Wales Thomas had to face a country and a church in decline; this inspired poetry of an austere beauty. The poem "The Bright Field" seems to me to capture the essence of Thomas' poetry:

"I have seen the sun break through / to illuminate a small field / for a while, and gone my way / and forgotten it. But that was the pearl / of great price, the one field that had / the treasure in it. I realize now / that I must give all that I have / to possess it. Life is not hurrying // on to a receding future, nor hankering after / an imagined past. It is the turning / aside like Moses to the miracle / of the burning bush, to a brightness / that seemed as transitory as your youth / once, but is the eternity that awaits you."