Arbie's Unoriginally Titled Book Blog
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Uncollected Poems, R.S. Thomas
Let's just ignore the irony/confusion of collecting up a pile of poems, publishing them in a book and titling said book, "Uncollected Poems." They're poems that were never published in a collection during Thomas' lifetime...
...which led me to have low expectations; surely this meant Thomas didn't rate them? Of course copyright issues and questions of theme may also have been responsible in some or all cases...
...but I have completist tendencies, so having read both volumes of Thomas' Collected Poems and believing I'd read all his poetry, I just had to have this when I stumbled across it...
...so, naff works that should have been left in obscurity or lost gems rightly brought back into the light? More the latter than the former, I am glad to say. There are some very worthwhile poems here, though the predominant themes are the same as you would find in the "Collected" volumes. The same trends and developments are also visible as the poems are presented chronologically, except for the experimental urge given expression late on, obvious in Collected Later Poems, which is invisible here. I found the same preponderance of favourites early (1950s) and late (last 15 years or so) as I did in the bigger books, so this volume could perhaps be considered as a pretty good microcosm or overview of Thomas' career, however, it doesn't have the most famous poems. If you want to try Thomas' poetry out, Selected Poems is the way to go. This book is for established fans.
In case you are completely unfamiliar with R.S. Thomas, I refer you to the following reviews which discuss his work thematically, at least a little:
http://arbieroo.booklikes.com/post/334973/post
http://arbieroo.booklikes.com/post/680481/collected-later-poems-r-s-thomas
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