18 pages • 36 minutes read
All That I Owe the Fellows of the Grave
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Further Reading & Resources
Related Poems
"Spring and Fall" by Gerald Manley Hopkins (1880)
Thomas long acknowledged the influence of Hopkins in his own reinvention of the poetic line and his unconventional use of tricky rhythms. A wistful lyrical meditation on growing old as seen through the eyes of a child, the Hopkins poem argues, much as the Thomas poem does, that given the reality of life’s quick passing, every moment is rare and welcome. Like Thomas’s poem, this poem is set to Hopkins’s own eccentric rhythms, and similarly plays with the elegant intricacies of sounds and the sonic appeal of long vowels and sibilant consonants.
"To His Coy Mistress" by Andrew Marvell (1681)
Thomas has open fascination with the elegant philosophical meditations on time and mortality that defined the British metaphysical poets of the late 17th century, among them the prolific Marvell. Another carpe diem poem, the narrative of seduction typifies Marvell’s wit and is a subtle celebration of indulgent eros despite moral consequences. Love, the poem argues, alone affirms the purpose of an otherwise brief and pointless life—an echo of Thomas’s own affirmation of the power of the heart.
"Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" by Dylan Thomas (1947)
Written more than 15 years after “All That I Owe,” this iconic exhortation (Thomas’s best known and most anthologized lyric) is addressed to Thomas’s own father, battling throat cancer, to not ever surrender to death, to rage against its inevitability. The poem has inevitably been positioned as a kind of muted sequel to the brash, youthful elevation of the flesh in “All That I Owe” despite the body’s inevitable demise.
Further Literary Resources
"The Poetry of Dylan Thomas" by David Daiches (1954)
Written shortly after Thomas’s death at age 39 by one of the most respected critics of post-war British literature, this perspective is still considered an indispensable first step in appreciating the achievement of Thomas’s craft. The article was among the first to position Thomas precariously between the Romantics he loved and the Modernists he admired. Although this poem is not specifically treated, there is a section on Thomas’s notebook poems of the 1930s and how Thomas used them as part of the evolution into his signature poetic line.
Dylan Thomas: A New Life by Andrew Lycett (2004)
It has been difficult to approach Thomas as a poet given his status as a template for the bohemian, self-destructive, doomed artist, a persona he carefully crafted. This landmark biography argues that Thomas was more than his audacious poetic line and “verbal pyrotechnics,” taking poems such as “All That I Owe” to explore how Thomas was both pagan and mystic, both realist and visionary.
"‘Argument of the Hewn Voice’: The Early Poetry of Dylan Thomas" by J. M. Kertzer (1979)
Published originally in Contemporary Literature, this article dissects the early poetry of Thomas with special attention to Thomas’s emerging sense of wordplay, what Thomas termed “the complicated violence” of language. The argument here suggests that although, or because, Thomas’s themes were almost cliché—live fully, do not fear the heart, love deeply and irresponsibly, enjoy the moment—what makes them striking and indeed landmark was his application of the freedoms of Modernism. He sought radically new ways to use grammar, to shape poetic lines, and to create rhythm and rhyme.
Listen to the Poem
Despite the lines’ rich aural effects, “All That I Owe” has seldom been recorded. One interpretation, however, is a stark reading as an elegy for a soldier killed in battle and the doomed camaraderie of soldiering. The reading takes some liberties with the poem (written in 1933, the poem was clearly not a response to either of the great wars that would bookend Thomas’s life) and misses the poem’s generous optimism, but the reading does play up the rolling vowels, clipped consonants, and the flow of the lines with dramatic effect.
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By Dylan Thomas
