Reviewed by Joseph Roberts
Where Have the Old Words Got Me?
Explications of Dylan Thomas’s Collected Poems by Ralph Maud

Dylan Thomas died 50 years ago, but his poems continue to charm and mystify most readers. We have heard the popular A Child’s Christmas In Wales and his radio play, Under Milk Wood. These are his familiar, safe, easily understood writings.

But Thomas’s works run much deeper and challenge with words in a way that shapes lives.
Bob Zimmerman honored Dylan Thomas when he became Bob Dylan, instilling the mystique that captured a generation with his "spoken words" songs. The Free Wheelin’ Bob Dylan and Highway 61 Revisited albums drove deep into our psyches.

Thomas was a precocious, mischievous, poetic talent. Why did other famous writers quote him? His writings intoxicated and ignited the pre-hippy beat era full of Ferlingetti, Kerouac, Ginsberg, Cassidy and others.

Everything becomes close. In the opening to Arthur Koestler’s 1954 autobiography, he quotes Thomas. In Part One, Euphoria, Koestler opens with "When one burns one’s boats, what a very nice fire it makes." Dylan Thomas.

Ralph Maud explicates 93 poems starting with After the Funeral (In Memory of Ann Jones). Maud says this was written in stages over a number of years, pointing to Thomas’s own development "not as an elegy but as a struggle of the poet with his own feelings It is the poet’s need to tell the precise truth of his feelings that pushes this poem He is asking to be coerced into love so he can cancel the theatrical self-centred boy he was at the funeral and now bless the spirit of his beloved aunt Ann’s Bard persists in raising up a monument it is not for sentimental reasons but because someone is really in need of a blessing, the poet himself"

This random sample of Ralph Maud’s explications is just a taste of his book, which is based on a wide spectrum of sources: poems; letters to publishers, friends and relatives; radio interviews and prose. His list of cited works spans two pages, including Maud’s earlier work, Entrances to Dylan Thomas’s Poetry, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1963.

Though one of the best-known poets of the 20th century, much of Dylan Thomas’s writing is considered obscure and difficult; hence, readers retreat to those poems most easily understood.

Ralph Maud is a world-renowned expert on Dylan Thomas and co-editor with Walford Davies of the standard editions of Thomas’s work, Collected Poems, 1934-1953.

After a lifetime of studying Thomas’s work, Maud’s Where Have the Old Words Got Me? opens the imagery and movements of Dylan Thomas’s poems heretofore seemingly sealed.

Ralph Maud is a fine detective for unearthing this poetic anthropology.

Where Have the Old Words Got Me? is published by McGill-Queen’s University Press, ISBN 0-7735-2421-5, copyright 2003. www.mqup.mcgill.ca/index.php

Reviewed by Dawna Shuman
Soul Power
by Nikki de Carteret

Juxtaposing fascinating teachings from the ancient mystics with stories of modern seekers, as well as her own extraordinary spiritual journey toward wholeness after a disastrous and life-changing car accident in Paris, de Carteret invites you to explore the factors that drain your spiritual energy and what transformational forces restore it.

Written in a poetic and meditative style, this book is a discovery of spirit and of spiritual growth. Examining themes such as love, enlightenment, compassion, silence, synchronicity, dark night of the soul, harmony and bliss, it serves as a friendly road map to the heart of the spiritual process.

"Soul power is the new spiritual intelligence. It comes from a knowledge of the true self and a clear understanding of the nature and function of the soul," says de Carteret. "People are searching as never before to understand themselves, the meaning of life, and their relationship to God." While this book will appeal to you if you are just starting out on your spiritual journey, it is especially written for those already on the path who are looking for ways to deepen their soul connection and experience of God.Soul Power is a unique spiritual experience that provides you the space to make your own intimate discoveries.

Nikki de Carteret, former BBC producer and journalist, conducts workshops on personal and organizational transformation.She also runs the Brahma Kamari Meditation Centre in Vancouver.

De Carteret will be holding a book signing at Banyen Books, Sept. 10, 6:30 pm 8 pm, at 3608 West 4th Ave.