We are not wholly bad or good, who live our lives under Milk Wood.The voices of Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood rise and fall, crashing into each other like waves under a milky moon, their sweet prose an effervescence of sounds and syllables to intoxicate the soul. This ‘play for voices’ follows the lives of the citizens of Milk Wood across a full day, bookmarked by the surrealistically sensational dream sequences of the two nights. The play simply engulfs you in its beautiful embrace, like [...]

Rewritten July 30th, 2011, read way back when and reread 2011Some works of literature just beg to be read out loud - This is the House that Jack Built and Hiawatha are two that most people are familiar with. Under Milk Wood too, is better appreciated read aloud. A sample (read aloud with Welsh accent, sing-song, go up like a question at the end of the line):FIRST VOICEMr Pugh, in the School House opposite, takes up the morningtea to Mrs Pugh, and whispers on the stairs MR. PUGHHere's your arseni [...]

I don't know Llarregub about many things, but I do know that Thomas's sloe black, crow black, boat-bobbing, poetic creation was one of the most enjoyable books I read in school.If you haven't yet acquainted yourself with his rich rhetoric and magical mischievousness, then please do!

I can honestly say that the world would be a lesser place if I had never read this play. It is not just that it is laugh-out-loud funny or that it is sad enough to make me weep - Captain Cat being forgotten by Rosie near the end is almost too painful to remember. But it is so full, so wonderfully overflowing with all the day to day concerns of life and love that it is a world in and of itself. Here is true creative genius.From husbands purchasing books on how to poison their wives to the terribl [...]

"This town's as full as a lovebird's egg."- Dylan Thomas, Under Milk WoodThis book has languished on my shelf.Ignored.Left alone. I bought this book years ago. It was a deal. It was a steal. It was $2 at Goodwill. I recognized Dylan Thomas and knew it was a Folio edition. $2? Value? Done. I brought it home, put it on the shelf. Thought about it only narrowly. I figured it was a book of poetry. Poems. Fights against the dying of the light and whatnots. Nope. It is certainly poetic. Lyrical. Whims [...]

Not a play or a poem, exactly. This was written to be performed as a BBC radio drama, and it's about life in a sleepy town in Wales. We follow a few characters as they go from dream to wakefulness and then move through the rest of their day. We get to hear their thoughts and reflections as they do every day things. Sounds very dull, I know, which is why you have to read (or listen to) it for yourself.In the tradition of small towns (both fictional and nonfictional), everyone has a big secret. Ea [...]

I like Dylan Thomas for two reasons1. I grew up in Wales 2. I read his book Under Milk Wood when I was in school.Wales is a strange place to grow up. For a start you're told as a child that it's full of castles and dragons and daffodils and that there is evil over the border (England) and that Rugby is the one true sport. Some of those things are true. I'm sure even Dylan Thomas thought them from time to time. I lived outside Cardiff and Thomas was busily engaged in being Welsh in and around the [...]

A smorgasbord of language. I am still blown away every time I read that first measured sentence, about the woodland ‘limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea’.If you only knew Dylan Thomas from his short poems (as I did before I read this) then prepare for a very pleasant shock. The wonderful rhythm of the lines here, the extraordinary creativity of compound words and unexpected similes, all sustained over a considerable distance, is something [...]

“Sundown dazzling day gold through my eyes but my eyes turned within only see starless and bible black…” King Crimson – Starless.Under Milk Wood has a texture of a lyrical myth so it is timeless…People sleep and they dream People wake up and they play fools, dawdle, muck around, misbehave, recollect, fantasize and build castles in the air…“There's the clip clop of horses on the sun-honeyed cobbles of the humming streets, hammering of horse-shoes, gobble quack and cackle, tomtit twi [...]

This just takes my breath away.The language. The evocation of time and place.The exquisite rhythm.I'm in love with this piece of work

Dylan Thomas originally intended this work to be radio play. However, my first experience of it was seeing the film adaptation narrated by Richard Burton, back when I was in high school in the 1970s. I remember two things about the experience: loving the sound of Richard Burton's voice, and feeling overwhelmed. This extract from the review in the New York Times goes some way to explaining my reaction: Too many words, perhaps, for the stage. Too many words, I'm convinced, for the screen. It's not [...]

I remember the first time I came across Under Milk Wood, and it was when I was learning about imagery for my GCSEs. I fell in love with it - and, of course, with Richard Burton's beautiful First Voice.One joy of being an English teacher is teaching your favourite texts to someone new - which I'm pretty sure was what was happening to to me, the first time I was taught this. It wasn't on the syllabus.Another joy is that you can take playful, inventive, poetic language and give it to a kid who's in [...]

Drama, poetry or comedy?, how about all of them. Centering around one day in a small, unexceptional Welsh coastal town. We first meet those who recide at a point before dawn, the night "flying like black flour", as the reader drifts off through the dark fields and streets, through the bedrooms of the sleeping residents and into their dreams. From there we watch as they wake up and work, following them out of bed over this one day and then finally back into bed as night falls.The melodic and beau [...]

I absolutely loved this radio play. It is a delicious peek into the lives of a sleepy Welsh fishing village and all the intrigues that go on in the peoples' lives. The book is great fun to read in a group but I would recommend you hear the audio version (with Richard Burton as one of the narrators) to get a true feel for the musicality and poetic beauty of this book.

OK, I don't know what this is, but it's not your average play Under Milk Wood is something else. It deserves its own category. Shortly before his death I reckon Dylan Thomas came sublimely close to the perfect narrative. Readers of 'Cold Comfort Farm' will definitely recognise an Aunt Ada Doom-ish humour that rides on the coattails of stream of consciousness. Under Milk Wood is very hard to pin down as it's a mix of so many things, and that's what makes it so astonishingly brilliant. It delves i [...]

Wow Yup, this is going in my recommendation list to other people whether they ask for it or not.

If I could go back in time about 45 minutes ago and beat myself into a bloody, vegetative state, or at least into an illiterate delirium, so that I wouldn't have read this book, I would. If I could fit pliers into my ears so that I could rip out the sound of this play from my head forever, I would. If I could dig up Dylan Thomas' body and rig it with explosives and blow it up, making me blind from the concussion and so ensuring that I never accidentally read so much as a line of this again, beca [...]

Here we enter the lives of the residents of Milk Wood, a Welsh seaside town, first through their dreams, then through their daytime interactions with each other. As in all of our lives, some moments are terribly laugh-out-loud funny, some poignantly sad. Dylan Thomas was quite the wordsmith! Sub-titled "A Play for Voices," I would love to hear voices perform this play someday.

Hate:MRS PUGHGive me the parcel. WILLY NILLY [postman whose wife reads all the mail to him before he delivers it:]It's for Mr Pugh, Mrs Pugh. MRS PUGHNever you mind. What's inside it? WILLY NILLYA book called Lives of the Great Poisoners.[later:]MRS PUGHPersons with manners do not read at table, FIRST VOICEsays Mrs Pugh. She swallows a digestive tablet as big as ahorse-pill, washing it down with clouded peasoup water. [Pause:] MRS PUGHSome persons were brought up in pigsties. MR PUGHPigs don't r [...]

Under Milk Wood is exactly what it says it is - a play for voices; and no-one's voice does it more justice than that of Richard Burton, a Welshman whose reading of this work is committed, passionate, resonant, rich and second-to-none.I should also say that this is not a monologue. Burton is the narrator but there is also a full cast of actors reading all the parts, which brings the play to life and gives it depth.If you liked reading the play, listen to this and feel its power. I might try liste [...]

This play is so dear to me. Any book you thumb through when you're not expecting anything much in particular, and instead get something startling, will do that. I had forgotten that words could be strung together in a way that could thrill me, hush me, soothe and amuse me, all in one. I had not had so much fun, purely from wordplay, maybe ever. Every year or so I return, gladly, giddily, happy with expectation.*When Under Milk Wood was first performed in New York in 1953, Dylan Thomas’ advice [...]

Masterpiece.

Many years ago, I bought the vinyl LP of the BBC radio production of Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood. It’s subtitled, ‘A Play for Voices’, and that’s about as accurate a description as I can think of. The radio production is superb, with the brilliant Richard Burton articulating the First Voice in his own inimitable style. A wonderful listening experience.But what of the text? I picked up a copy from a small independent bookshop whilst shopping in Beverley with my daughter for a student [...]

Dylan Thomas writes so amazingly beautifully. The story just flows and it is like music. The story is about nothing and yet about everything - just the ordinary nuances of life and community. The differences between the people in the town and their lives. I strongly recommend you read this - or watch a production of it. Time passes. Listen. Time passes.Come closer now.Only you can hear the houses sleeping in the streets in the slow deep salt andsilent black, bandaged night. Only you can see, in [...]

This 1954 BBC recording featuring Richard Burton is a tour de force performance. Dylan Thomas had a sensitive ear for the rhythms of speech that informed his accentual verse and an imaginative approach to descriptive language that contributed both to his immense popularity during his all-too-brief life and after and to the dismissal of his work by many modern academic poets unable to see his value because of their tunnel-vision views of what modern poetry should be. To hear his words brought to [...]

A radio 'feature', rather than a play, according to the introduction to my edition, Under Milk Wood is amazing. It's full of lively, unique description, a rapidfire sketch of village life. I can't even pick out a part I like best because all of it is vivacious and interesting. The description, on the first page, for just one example, of the night, 'starless and bible-black'. Dylan Thomas knew what he was doing when it came to language, at all times, and it shows.The introduction to this edition, [...]

This is technically brilliant. Obviously Dylan was at home with the English lexicon and brought all his poetic prowess to the play, full of alliteration, melody and word play. And then? There is little substance otherwise, the content falls flat and the concept of witnessing these villagers dreams at night and actions during the day is just too gimmicky. I have gained nothing by witnessing their lives and dreams. A great aesthetic play, but that's where it stops for me.

I first read this when I was 8 years old and, amazingly, it hooked me. The cadence of the lilting Welsh voices was enthralling. I have read it many times since and seen it performed once and heard it performed on radio. One of my favourite plays of all time.

This was quaint as f*ck! And a little strange

Most actual Welsh people have a conflict of emotions about Dylan Thomas. On the one hand, we take pride in his international success and his undoubted ability, at least on his better days, to put together a phrase that rings in the mind. Yet, at the same time, no modern author did more to cement the image of our ancient warrior-race as ‘quaint,’ to use Professor Schama’s notorious expression.Both sides of Dylan are on display in ‘Under Milk Wood,’ his play for voices, probably his most [...]