SOURCE: Bold, Alan. “Young Heaven's Fold: The Second Childhood of Dylan Thomas.” In Dylan Thomas: Craft or Sullen Art, edited by Alan Bold, pp. 156-74. London, England: Vision Press, 1990.

In the following essay, Bold explores the themes within Thomas's poetry of lost childhood innocence and the adult's ability to recapture that innocence through the imagination.

Since his tragically early death at the age of 39 Dylan Thomas has been treated rather shabbily as public property. Television, for example, has used him as the raw material for programmes illustrating the popular notion of the poet who has more sensuality than sense. Invariably Thomas is portrayed as an obstreperous drunk who just happened to write poetry in the few moments he spent away from the pub and the fiercely argumentative proximity of his wife. In A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle, Hugh MacDiarmid said of Scotland's annually-celebrated bard:

No' wan...