17 pages • 34 minutes read
In My Craft or Sullen Art
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Literary Devices
Form and Meter
The absence of traditional meter in Dylan Thomas’s poem reflects the raw energy of creativity—which is also the subject of this work. “In My Craft or Sullen Art” comprises 20 lines of varying lengths, unbroken by stanza breaks, suggesting that the poet is pouring out his unexpected, unanticipated encounter with his moonlight muse. Eschewing the tidy rhythms and tight rhymes of conventional poetic form, Thomas creates and sustains his own rhythm, achieved by changing meter line to line in a jazz-inflected approach that feels improvised but in fact is a careful recreation of the frenetic process of writing. The line length reflects the poet’s own musings—longer when the thoughts are more involved, shorter to reflect urgency or unvarnished candor.
Rhymes occur but are not regular, recurring several times rather than reaching for new assonance. For example, the rhymes stages/ages/wages/pages appear more than once. Rhymes also bookend the poem: The first line ends on “art,” is rhymed with in the middle of the poem via heart/apart, and then brings back the first rhyme as the last word of the poem. There are also near-rhymes in the form of arms/psalms. The frequency of rhyme contrasts its irregular use, both upholding and breaking the expected rules of prosody—just as the poem upholds the works of “the towering dead” poets that came before (Line 15) and rejects following in their footsteps.
Sonic Effect
Thomas was a natural performer. His university reading tours in America in the early 1950s became legendary and influenced the emerging generation of Beat poets, who responded to Thomas’s inventive recitative and dramatic delivery.
While Thomas had little regard for conventional expectations for the look or structure of poetry, he did explore how language, delivered with theatrical grandness, could create a feeling of sublimity. The transformation of ordinary words into an emotionally impactful poem is key to how Thomas’s poetry is meant to be consumed—the intention is performance, not silent sustained reading.
Thomas’s oracular delivery of this poem (See: Further Resources) enacts this interest. When reading aloud, Thomas works the poem’s vowel and consonant sounds, an ever-changing sonic weave that feels improvised but in fact reflects the poem’s careful and subtle dynamic of long vowels and short guttural consonants. For instance, Thomas draws out the word “sullen” until it feels ominous; he spits out the hard p’s to suggest his disdain for fame; he lingers over the long vowel in “moon” and dwells lovingly on the words “arms,” making it two syllables to suggest his relationship with this celestial muse and the lovers’ intimacy. Recitation, then, creates the fullest impact of the poem.
Enjambment
Conventional poetic lines work toward end-marks—such as periods, semi-colons, or commas—or even use physical breaks (white space between stanzas) to create a sense of closure to each disparate thought and take control of the poem. End punctuation creates order, provides pauses, and completes ideas.
Rejecting this structure, Thomas instead writes lines that primarily use enjambment, a poetic device that deliberately avoids end-mark punctuation, forcing readers to continue onto the next line without a break. Only three of the poem’s 20 lines work toward a period or a comma. Enjambment dynamites the rigid patterning of endings. This open-endedness reflects the poem’s thematic premise—a poet compelled one moonlit night to compose. One line moves relentlessly into the next, mirroring the rush of inspiration.
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By Dylan Thomas
