Collected Later Poems

by R.S. Thomas

R.S. Thomas (1913-2000) is one of the major poets of our time, as well as one of the finest religious poets in the English language and Wales's greatest poet. This substantial gathering of his late poems shows us the final flowering of a truly great poet still writing at the height of his powers right through his 70s and 80s. It begins with his autobiographical sequence "The Echoes Return Slow", which has been unavailable for many years, and goes up to "Residues", written immediately before his death at the age of 87. These powerful poems -- about time and history, the self, love, the machine, the Cross and prayer -- cover all of his major areas of questioning. This is R.S. Thomas in a winter light, his fury concentrated on the inhumanity of man and modern technology, his gaze absorbed by the God he felt in Nature, but finding nourishment in 'waste places'. At the same time he writes with resigned feeling and immense insight, as well as grim humour and playful irony, of isolation, ageing, marriage and 'love's shining greenhouses'. For Thomas, 'Poetry is that / which arrives at the intellect / by way of the heart.'

Genres: Poetry, English Literature

368 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Ronald Stuart Thomas (1913-2000) (otherwise stylised as R.S. Thomas) was a Welsh poet and Anglican priest who was noted for his nationalism, spirituality and deep dislike of the anglicisation of Wales.

Reviews

[Neil Fulwood · Rating 5 out of 5]

As he approached the Millennium and the end of his life, Thomas’s poetry flared into incandescence, raging against mortality, modernity and the machine. And yet, as always, humour erupts into his work at the unlikeliest of moments.

[Rex · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think I prefer R.S. Thomas's earlier work in general, but there are a handful of poems in this collection that are up there with the classics.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book contains the collections published in the last decade of Thomas's life and the posthumous collection, Residues.

THIS REVIEW HAS BEEN CURTAILED IN PROTEST AT GOODREADS' CENSORSHIP POLICY

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[Nate · Rating 5 out of 5]

Holy crap. The most honest, spiritual, dry, sad, hopeful poet ever.

[Zeta9991 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Non sono esperta di poesia e questa è una raccolta molto grossa, quindi è difficile generalizzare attraverso le stelline. In ogni caso, nei miei studi ho ovviamente dovuto affrontare molti poeti e Thomas, forse anche perché contemporaneo, mi ha colpito infinitamente.

Probabilmente le sue opere per me più significative sono quelle in cui si interroga sull'esistenza di Dio e sul proprio rapporto con Lui, indagando anche il proprio rapporto con la Scienza, da uomo moderno. Ha chiaramente un pessimo rapporto con le macchine e le tecnologie, ma un grande interesse invece per l'Universo, le stelle e la genetica, tutti ambiti che in qualche modo cozzano a più riprese con le convinzioni religiose. Ecco, credo che Thomas incarni bene lo stato di dubbio che un credente dei giorni nostri si trova ad affrontare e alcune poesie mostrano una franchezza che onestamente non mi è capitato spesso di trovare nelle persone religiose. La franchezza di chiedersi certe cose, di porsi anche delle domande scomode che possono far vacillare la Fede, la franchezza anche di litigare con Dio, di immaginarlo lontano, indifferente, o forse addirittura malvagio, senza che tutto ciò implichi blasfemia, ma anzi che sia la prova di un rapporto autentico e sano con la divinità stessa.

Per tutto questo, considero Thomas un grande poeta.

[Mauberley]

Do you love poetry? Why haven't you read this?

[SARDON · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading these later poems, while considering Thomas's earlier works, is like listening to an organist play a cluster of familiar motifs with continually increasing dynamics and pedal-tones, with everything leading to an intensity of fullness. For whether Thomas persists in his ongoing cynicism regarding the "civilizational machine" or engages us with his equally long-standing dialectic of doubt and faith, the correspondence of these themes creates very rich connections both within and across the range of the collections contained in this generous Bloodaxe-published volume.

At this twilight period of his career, even Thomas' directly Wales-inspired poems contain less politically and socially-derived vitriol and, consequently, present the Welsh coast and countryside as a far more natural sanctum for spiritual contemplations than the chapel and cathedral. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of his oeuvre is how it displays the growth of the poet's creative impulse from the tense grounds constantly held in contestation between collective humanity's blind demand for constant progress and every individual's barely-articulated inner life which pertains to no object or objective.

[Gareth Culshaw · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love RS Thomas but there poems are not his best. I think he had a lot of questions in his head and he tried to answer them. His uncollected poems is a better book to read.

[Stephen Kendall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gift from Andrew Fullerton

[Gramarye · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having read and enjoyed R.S. Thomas's Collected Poems 1945-1990 a little more than a year ago, when I came across a copy of his collected later poems I thought it only proper to pick it up. This book covers his last five collections of poetry, and also includes several poems and fragments that he had written but not published before his death in 2000.

Most of my impressions about Thomas's poetry are covered in my earlier review, but there are a few points that bear mentioning in this second collection. "The Echoes Return Slow", the first section of the book, is an autobiography done in short snatches of stream-of-consciousness prose followed by brief poems. These later poems seem to have a more religious turn than those from his earlier collection. Most of the poems have a strongly Christian theme, musings on man's relationship with God and how to make sense of religion and faith in a world where both are often tested. Compared to the first collection, there are certainly fewer rants (so to speak) about the decline of Wales and Welsh culture and language. And though I enjoy Thomas's writing style, with its alternating crisp tones and slow, languid musings, I have to say that I prefer the poems of the first collection. Thomas's poetic voice comes through more strongly, I think, in his writings about the Welsh people. But it's still a moving and thought-provoking set of poems by a very remarkable poet, and I'm glad I have a copy of this volume to complete my collection of his work.

[Poetreehugger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Profound in its unflinching honesty. Not only open to, but fully aware of, the unseen, the nearly unspeakable, the mystical paradox that must result when the human mind contemplates the infinite.