Dylan Thomas In America
Dylan Thomas’ achievement as a reader established the popularity of poetry with large audiences: the passionate eloquence of his recitals liberated poetry from the stuffy lecture room and made it accessible.
Dylan Thomas had a wife and three children to keep, with no regular income, and these last years were harassed by a lack of money. Demands for long standing tax debts created a financial crisis and the American tours were originally undertaken as a means of earning quickly large sums of money to pay these debts. The emotional and physical toll these tours made on a man not in good health, proved unendurable. In Wales he usually drank beer, regularly but not in excess. In America the strain of the tours made the preferred whiskies all too irresistible, the bouts of hard drinking, and a flight from loneliness and exhaustion, despite the lionizing he enjoyed.
Caitlin Thomas writes; „America was a poisonous atmosphere: he needed opposition, gentle, but firm, constant curbing. Nobody ever needed encouragement less, and he was drowned in it.“