The Boily Boy
[N a prologue to "A few words by Dylan Thomas," the latest exhibit in ZB Sunday Showcase, the announcer was pleased to observe that as a result of Dylan’s value as "copy,’ the community is now poetry conscious. I cannot share this view. Dylan’s rumbustious life and its faithful catalogue may have stirred some to wonder at the odd abodes the Muses sometimes choose, but how many people have been led direct from this to the Collected Poems? A few, perhaps, but far more, surely, to the salty parade of Dylan Thomas in America, However, let that pass. Dylan’s few words, happily recorded for us in Boston in 1952, introduced his programme with a characteristic "explosive bloodburst of a_ boily boy" in that highly stylised manner it would be fun to try and parody, piling up a series of packed, alliterative: images, and letting them collapse with a nicely-timed bathos at the end. He then read three of his own poems, and I wondered again at the curiously liturgical, almost modal, effect he contrives; his voice never rests, as it were, on the tonic, and no statement he makes seems final. But everything he did was rounded into a high rhetorical flourish worlds away, and thank God for it, from this age of averages, mediocrities, and common men.
B.E.G.
M.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19570329.2.34.4
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 920, 29 March 1957, Page 21
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223The Boily Boy New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 920, 29 March 1957, Page 21
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
Copyright in the Denis Glover serial Hot Water Sailor published in 1959 is owned by Pia Glover. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this serial and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the Listener. You can search, browse, and print this serial for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from Pia Glover for any other use.
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