Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

In "Dylan Thomas, and Now Matthew Mead—As He Himself, ‘To Edward Thomas’," Charles Olson reflects on the lives and deaths of poets who grapple with the essence of life and language, particularly in the shadow of war. Olson’s poetic tribute weaves together the legacies of Welsh poet Alun Lewis, English poets Edward Thomas and Dylan Thomas, and the lesser-known Matthew Mead, acknowledging the ways in which they each sought to capture life’s fleeting beauty while contending with existential threats and personal struggles.

The poem opens with Olson’s thoughts of Alun Lewis, a poet and soldier whose life and work were deeply shaped by the brutality of World War II. Olson situates himself within a similar scene—walking in the rain, his coat “steaming in from the soaking”—evoking a setting of dampness, bleakness, and introspection. This physical environment mirrors the inner state of poets who must navigate the emotional weight of war and mortality. The “Italian blue” plastered on an old brick building, reminiscent of weathered beauty, symbolizes how both individuals and communities bear the marks of time, change, and memory.

Olson’s focus shifts from the physical environment to the poets’ inward journeys, where “war, and life, and poets sweetening themselves” signifies the enduring search for meaning in a world marked by destruction. He references Alun Lewis’s ability to find tenderness amid chaos, recalling how Lewis wrote of Gweno, his wife, and of Aberdare, his Welsh hometown. Olson emphasizes that Lewis’s language, like that of many war poets, sought to reconcile the tension between the beauty of love and nature and the harsh realities of war. The image of Gweno “rustling in his arms” becomes a poignant moment of solace, showing Lewis as a man striving to connect with both personal love and cultural heritage even as he faced the horror of warfare.

This theme of poets attempting to “sweeten” their existence by capturing the beauty and vulnerability of human experience speaks to Olson’s own poetic aspirations. The line “a Welshman to tone the syntax we have broken” suggests that poets like Lewis and Thomas, rooted in their own landscapes and languages, held a unique ability to restore something essential to poetry that Olson sees as fragmented. Lewis’s work, steeped in his Welsh identity, becomes a balm to a fractured world, offering language that neither shies away from suffering nor loses sight of beauty.

Olson’s musings are filled with the notion of poets as seekers, individuals who open “closed doors” of experience, memory, and emotion. This reference to “closed doors” points toward the inner realms of understanding that poets unlock, as they open themselves and others to new ways of seeing and feeling. The phrase “a man carrying his straw in speech” suggests that poets carry the simplest, most human elements of life—love, loss, longing—as they attempt to articulate what is often ineffable. The “straw” could signify both the fragility of these experiences and the modest tools available to poets as they attempt to build something meaningful from the fragments of life.

As Olson moves to recollect Edward Thomas, he aligns these poets with an “uttermost intent,” an almost divine purpose of reaching beyond themselves, much like “smoke” that “heats” him in recollection. Thomas’s legacy as a poet who found beauty in nature and simplicity, even in wartime, resonates with Olson’s view of poetry as a way of crystallizing life’s essence. The line “nor death as anything to do with answer so much as he who spoke” emphasizes that these poets did not seek simple answers to life’s questions. Rather, their work suggests that life’s worth lies in the act of speaking, expressing, and connecting.

Olson’s reverence for these poets culminates in the image of their words as a “sugar” pulled from a flower, a metaphor that captures the essence of poetry as something sweet, ephemeral, and distilled from life’s most fleeting moments. This final line conveys Olson’s belief that poetry is not about definitive answers but about capturing the richness and depth of lived experience. In honoring Lewis, Thomas, and others, Olson underscores the resilience and sensitivity of those who dwell “on life and are cut from under,” poets who, in their own ways, reached the pinnacle of human expression by confronting both beauty and despair.

In this poem, Olson thus offers a tribute to poets who embody the spirit of human resilience. He celebrates their ability to transform suffering and uncertainty into language that transcends individual experience, becoming a collective testament to the enduring search for meaning amid impermanence.

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