Dylan Thomas -- Poetry Analysis

In Dylan Thomas’s poem “In My Craft or Sullen Art,” Thomas is answering the same question we were instructed to answer:  what does poetry mean to you?  In this poem, it is important to note that Thomas calls his poetry both a “craft” and a “sullen art.”  I think Thomas is suggesting that poetry is an art form, but one that is undervalued or perhaps not capable of reaching everyone.  Thomas informs the reader that he does not write poetry for “ambition or bread / or the strut and trade of charms.”  This suggests that Thomas doesn’t write for his own benefit (“ambition”), for money (“bread”), or for fame and power (“the strut and trade of charms”).  Instead, Thomas writes “for the common wages / of their [the lovers] most secret heart.”  I think Thomas is expressing that he writes for regular people, average lovers, who simply live their own private lives.  In the second stanza, Thomas references this point, and suggests that even the lovers do not “heed my craft or art,” which implies that even his art form may be missed on his target audience.  Perhaps this is why he calls poetry a “sullen art.”

“The Force that through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower” by Dylan Thomas is a poem about the energy of life, the force that goes by many names (God, the Universe, etc.).  Thomas compares the force driving a flower to fruition to that driving his own “green age,” which could stand for his own youth.  This very force has the power to move life forward, but it also has the power to destroy life, too, in the sense that it can “blast the roots of trees.”  Furthermore, Thomas compares “the force that drives the water through the rocks” to the force that “drives my red blood.”  In this case, Thomas is speaking of the same kind of life force.  In the aforementioned lines, Thomas is expressing how this force has the ability to give life.  In the next lines, Thomas shows how the force can take life away, too.  He writes of the force “that dries the mouthing streams” and “turns mine to wax.”  In this case, he is likely referring to the waxy look of corpses when they have been embalmed.  He continues on with this, addressing how he is “dumb” to tell this life force anything of observation.  In essence, I think Thomas is conveying the message that it is impossible to make sense of everything, and that it is silly or “dumb” to think that we are capable of understanding something as great as the force he describes.