Dylan Thomas, “A Few Words of a Kind,” follow up post.

On October 16th I posted my transcript of Dylan Thomas’, “A Few Words of a Kind,” and now I am compelled to write a follow up post regarding what has come my way as a result of that post.

Firstly, the post was hyperlinked in the November 2013 News Round-Up & Forthcoming Events newsletter at DylanThomasNews.Com. I was sincerely elated to see this notification appear in my inbox the day that it went up.

Secondly, as I made friends and acquaintances with Dylan Thomas aficionados around the web I encountered a new emotion that I’d never felt before… As a result of having my tweets retweeted and favorited by Twitter users such as The Dylan Thomas Center Swansea (@DTCSwansea) and Dylan Thomas News (@DylanThomasNews) and also, now, being followed by them I felt a great sense of the emotion, “fiero,” which is a kind of pride inspired by great accomplishment done by oneself. I’d never encountered this outside of stage performances or passing difficult exams as an interpreter. I certainly never thought I’d encounter it by viewing my twitter feed.

I believe, then, it was the fellow at Dylan Thomas News who informed me about the Dylan Thomas 100 celebration where fans recorded Vine videos of single lines of Thomas’ poetry and they were then pieced together to create Youtube videos of the entire poem.

I was pretty excited to have had been chosen as the closing line to Thomas’ poem, “The Hunchback in the Park.”

And then there was, lastly, the comment I received from a Dylan Thomas fan after he’d found the transcript that I had done…

Jason- Over 45 years ago, before the advent of the new technology, I put the Caedmon recording of “A Few Words of a Kind” on my turntable, and tried over and over to copy down the transcription of this marvelous introduction to Dylan Thomas’s poetry. I finally gave up, knowing I would never be able to get it exactly. A few years later, I was doing research at our local library, and found the complete transcription of his remarks in an issue of “Mademoiselle” magazine. I do not have the exact date of the magazine, but I do have a copy of the transcription in its entirety with complete accuracy. You did a wonderful job with your transcription, but it occurred to me that you might want a copy of the remarks as Dylan gave them . If you would like me to mail you a copy, I would be glad to do so. Just email me back and let me know. It is gratifying to know that there are other people out there who also love and appreciate Dylan Thomas. The irony is, in my opinion, due in part to the infusion and reliance on technology, that we have lost the beautiful expression of language that made Dylan Thomas memorable. Namaste
Weiss

I promptly sent Weiss my mailing address and less than one week later the transcript as Dylan wrote it arrived in my mail. I read it thoroughly and found that I had only made one or two minor mistakes. Mistakes which, for the sake of making the easiest of the Copy & Paste option, I’ve gone back and corrected.

While I am certain I’ll eventually discover the issue of Mademoiselle that this article was posted in; thus far no results have come my way…

And, lastly, one of the more amusing things that I cranked out while enjoying this venture was when I was submitting a vine for the Dylan Thomas 100 Poem and wasn’t actually aware of which poems they wanted. The line, “daft with a drug that’s smoking in a girl / and curling round the bud that forks her eye,” as presented by my pug, Watson, and myself…