The Poems of Dylan Thomas

297 pp. In 1952, when Dylan Thomas published his Collected Poems, with a specially written “Author’s Prologue," he took for granted that many years of work lay ahead of him. But his death a year later and his widening importance have made every poem he ever finished a significant part of the heritage his short life bequeathed us. It has taken years to sort out texts and manuscripts and to determine the best way to present them. Daniel Jones, collaborator and close friend of Thomas’s since boyhood, has added 102 works to the 90 originally published, and has endeavored to arrange them chronologically, in the order in which they were completed. Moreover, 26 poems written by Thomas before he was 16, often humorous and delightful pieces, are included in an Appendix, together with two others unfinished at his death; while the majestic “Prologue” (“to my readers, the strangers") comes first—-as Thomas intended.