Thomas, Dylan - John Ackerman (essay date 1991)
John Ackerman (essay date 1991)
SOURCE: Ackerman, John. “Deaths and Entrances.” In A Dylan Thomas Companion: Life, Poetry and Prose, pp. 106-29. Hampshire, England: Macmillan, 1991.
[In the following essay, Ackerman explores the influence of Thomas's World War II experiences on his poetry collection Deaths and Entrances.]
Deaths and Entrances was published in 1946, and the title of the volume is taken, of course, from Donne's sermon Deaths Duell: ‘Our very birth and entrance into this life, is … an issue from death.’1 The poems in this collection show a notable advance in sympathy and understanding due, in part, to the impact of war. Also, in the later poems he writes generally in a mood of reconciliation and acceptance, having outgrown the earlier rebellious and blasphemous attitudes of the enfant terrible. By this time, particularly in such poems as ‘A Refusal to Mourn’...
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