SOURCE: McKay, Don. “Crafty Dylan and the Altarwise Sonnets: ‘I build a flying tower and I pull it down.’” University of Toronto Quarterly 55, no. 4 (summer 1986): 375-94.

In the following essay, McKay compares the structure of Thomas's poetry, particularly the sonnets, with that of Thomas Hardy, reportedly Thomas's favorite poet.

One interesting entrance to the question of Dylan Thomas's craftsmanship is offered by the place he tends to assume, or be assigned, among modern poets. Donald Davie, in Thomas Hardy and British Poetry, finds ‘tragic significance to the fact that Hardy is said to have been Dylan Thomas' favourite poet, whereas Yeats was his chosen master.’¹ This tragedy evidently lies in what Davie perceives to be the abandonment of temporality by poets like Thomas and his friend Vernon Watkins for the eternal, atemporal, and mythic. Davie is referring to Vernon Watkins's comment, in his introduction to Thomas's letters to...