Too Brave to Dream by Thomas R.S.;

Author:Thomas, R.S.; [R.S. Thomas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 4783191
Publisher: Bloodaxe Books
Published: 2016-06-14T16:00:00+00:00

EDITORS’ NOTE

The texts in the present volume are based on R.S. Thomas’s handwritten copies of the poems. These were found interleaved, alongside the reproductions of the artworks to which they respond, in the poet’s personal copies of Herbert Read’s Art Now and Surrealism, held at the R.S. Thomas Research Centre, Bangor University. In general, no emendations have been made to Thomas’s texts, apart from some revisions, mainly relating to punctuation, for the sake of clarity and consistency.

The reproductions in Read’s two volumes to which R.S. Thomas responded are all in black and white. For the purposes of this volume, it was decided that, where possible, the reproductions should be in colour. (In an interview published in 1990, Thomas lamented the fact that the reproductions of the artworks in his two ekphrastic collections, Between Here and Now (1981) and Ingrowing Thoughts (1985), were in black and white: ‘through publishing the illustrations in monochrome the publishers lessened the impact of some of the poems’.)

The order in which the poems appear in the present volume follows the sequence of the texts as they were found in Thomas’s copies of Art Now and Surrealism.

We have decided to include a poem in response to a greetings card found at the back of Thomas’s copy of Art Now. This is Au Café by Henri Le Sidaner (1862–1939); both painting and poem are given in an appendix.

With two exceptions (given in the Editors’ Notes on the Poems at the end of the volume), Thomas did not give titles to these poems. The current edition follows this practice. In a number of instances, the titles that Read gave the artworks in Art Now and Surrealism have proved not to be the currently recognised (catalogue) titles. In these cases, we have noted both the recognised titles and the titles as they were known to Thomas.

There are three examples of Thomas responding to a single artwork with two poems. The sequence of these pairs of poems in each case is an editorial decision.

In two cases, Thomas was responding to what were, in Read’s books, cropped images rather than reproductions of the full artworks. The uncropped artworks are reproduced in a further appendix.

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