#r.s thomas

[apoemaday]

This

by R.S. Thomas

I thought, you see, that on some still night, When stars were shrill over his farm, And he and I kept ourselves warm By an old fire, whose bars were bright With real heat, the truth might ripen Between us naturally as the fruit Of his wild hedges, or as the roots, Swedes and mangolds, he grew then.

No luck; the thoughts hopefully sown On such evenings never could break The mind’s crust. Keeping my own Company now. I have forsaken All but his poor basement of bone, Where the one dry flame is awake.

[inkliinng]

Journaling has been one of the most rewarding activities in my life lately.

[llovelymoonn]

favourite poems of september

robin blaser the holy forest: collected poems of robin blaser: "[dear dusty moth]"

robin ekiss the mansion of happiness: "the bones of august"

e.e. cummings complete poems 1904-1962: "[anyone lived in a pretty how town]"

daisy fried econo motel, ocean city

david campos guilt shower and bad catholic

deborah a. miranda the zen of la llorona: "advice from la llorona"

v. penelope pelizzon blood memory

aimee nezhukumatathil invitation

jeffrey jullich portrait of colon dash paranthesis: "some materials may be inappropriate for children"

karina borowicz september tomatoes

patricia kirkpatrick survivor's guilt

kamau brathwaite born to slow horses: "i was wash-way in blood"

leslie adrienne miller the resurrection trade: "weaning"

allen edwin butt if briefly

gerrit lansing a february sheaf: selected writings, verse and prose: "how we sizzled in the pasture"

jayne cortez on the imperial highway: "in the morning"

stephen yenser preserves

ethan gilsdorf the imprint of september second

kathryn maris abc

paul zarzyski the antler tree

judith goldman vocoder: "rotten oasis"

tato laviera benedición: the complete poetry of tato laviera: "latero story"

tim seibles mosaic

ethan gilsdorf the imprint of september second

lucy wainger jiro dreams of sushi

robert duncan ground work: before the war: "a little language"

r.s. thomas the poems of r.s. thomas: "forest dwellers"

anthony wrynn saint john in the wilderness

reginald gibbons bear

walt whitman "are you the new person drawn toward me?"

kofi

[headlightsforever]

R.S. Thomas

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Cr. 1875 - Ethiopian Madonna

* * * *

Praise by R. S. Thomas I praise you because you are artist and scientist in one. When I am somewhat fearful of your power, your ability to work miracles with a set-square, I hear you murmuring to yourself in a notation Beethoven dreamed of but never achieved. You run off your scales of rainwater and sea water, play the chords of the morning and evening light, sculpture with shadow, join together leaf by leaf, when spring comes, the stanzas of an immense poem. You speak all languages and none, answering our most complex prayers with the simplicity of a flower, confronting us, when we would domesticate you to our uses, with the rioting viruses under our lens.

[kimbazee]

Evening Poetry, October 9

The Bright Field by R.S. Thomas I have seen the sun break throughto illuminate a small fieldfor a while, and gone my wayand forgotten it. But that was thepearl of great price, the one field that hadtreasure in it. I realise nowthat I must give all that I haveto possess it. Life is not hurryingon to a receding future, nor hankering afteran imagined past. It is the turningaside like Moses to the…

[atheneans]

-- ACTING by R. S. Thomas

[cathygeha]

REVIEW

The Buried Hours by R.S. Grant

Dark, gritty and compelling ~ engaged on page one and couldn’t stop reading till the very end

What I liked:

* Signe Gates: crime journalist, lost 48 hours in which she was raped on tape and threatened afterward, divorced, has PTSD, decides to follow a lead that might give her information on “the lost hours”

* Cole Banner: archaeologist, climbing and hiking skills, hired by Leo for upcoming series, attractive, engaging, more than what he appears to be, a good friend, strong, and intriguing

* The plot, pacing, setting, and writing

* That I was drawn in, became part of the story, and was rooting for justice and exposure of the criminals

* Learning more about human trafficking without the graphic details

* Being able to hate the bad guys

* Meeting Jasper and hoping he will have a book of his own

* That not everything was black and white

* That it made me think about the five W’s of journalism as I contemplated the characters of the book and their actions

* Wondering if there will be more books in this genre by this author

What I didn’t like:

* Who and what I was meant not to like

* Thinking about why criminals become criminals and feel entitled to do what they do

* Wonder about Signe’s ethics in producing the journalistic films she did

Did I like this book? Yes

Would I read more by this author? Yes

Thank you to NetGalley and Thomas & Mercer for the ARC – This is my honest review.

5 Stars

BLURB

Is she following a path of redemption or an enemy’s revenge? A crime reporter’s traumatic past comes back to haunt her in a twisting novel of lies, betrayals, and killer secrets. Investigative crime journalist Signe Gates’s life became a nightmare the day she was kidnapped and drugged. After forty-eight missing hours, she woke to a blur of unsettling memories and a warning from her unknown abductors: tell anyone what happened and they’ll die. They’ve already proved they will deliver on that threat. For two years, Signe has been haunted by what she knows she did and terrified of what else could be buried in her memories. Then an informant tells her two men recently found dead in Yosemite are connected to her missing hours, and more answers await her in the park’s backwoods. But she must hurry. Desperate to know who targeted her and why, she has no choice but to embark on the dangerous journey. With a seasoned hiker acting as her guide, Signe ventures into the wilderness to solve a crime, get justice for the crimes committed against her, and overcome her demons. If only she could trust the man leading her into the backwoods… Because with each new suspicion, deliverance is starting to look more and more like a trap.

[kaggsy59]

"...the once-in-a-lifetime opening of truth's flower..." #rsthomas #Dewithon23 #readingwales23

March is quite the month of reading events, and I’ve been happy to be able to take part in the Reading Ireland event. However, this month is also a time to look at literature from Wales with Paula’s #Dewithon23 and I’ve been happy to take part in this in previous years, with books by Saunders Lewis and R.S. Thomas. This year I’ve found myself running out of time a little, and with nothing obvious…

[missing-wires]

He has no friends, but he gets a lot of mail I'll bet he spent a little time in jail I heard he was up on the roof last night signaling with a flashlight And what's that tune he's always whistling? What's he building in there? What's he building in there? We have a right to know!

[shadderssss]

An illustration based on a poem - Reflections by R.S Thomas. (yes the one that was in Disco Elysium)

[lromanus]

It was like a church to me. I entered it on soft foot, Breath held like a cap in the hand. It was quiet. What God was there made himself felt, Not listened to, in clean colours That brought a moistening of the eye, In movement of the wind over grass. There were no prayers said. But stillness Of the heart's passions -- that was praise Enough; and the mind's cession Of its kingdom. I walked on, Simple and poor, while the air crumbled And broke on me generously as bread.

—R.S. Thomas / The Moor

poetry-chaikhana

[nerofied]

Hawk Tuah recently went viral for her quoting of R.S Thomas, reciting

"The furies are at home

in the mirror; it is their address.

Even the clearest water,

if deep enough can drown."

[howlsofannwn]

"...brittle with relics... worrying the carcase of an old song."

- R.S. Thomas

[georgieluz]

Juleeees, how are you? I'll go with 4, 10, 11, 21 and 28 for the "not from the US" ask set

jess! hello!! i'm not too bad, thanks! just got back from braving the rain to buy christmas jumpers (it's christmas jumper weekend at work on friday so had to go searching), how about you?

4. favourite dish specific for your country?

probably glamorgan sausage, which isn't made of actual sausage. it's made of cheese, but it's a vegetarian alternative to normal sausage. but yeah, usually made with cheese and leek.

i do also love a slice of bara brith, but specifically the one served in the restaurant at my workplace!

if we wanna be really basic then welshcakes are always a good shout and i have one every friday with a cup of tea in work!

crempogs are soo very good also!!

10. most enjoyable swear word in your native language?

ooh okay so i don't know if it would necessarily be the most enjoyable but it's the one my friends and i used most whilst growing up and that's "cachau bant" which is a way of saying "fuck off" but if you translate it literally it's "shit away".. and then i can't not include "cont" which i imagine you can guess the translation of (we use it affectionately here though, so it's more like "alright, cont?" or "shwmae cont" when you greet your friend)

11. favourite native writer/poet?

okay, it's probably very predictable to choose dylan thomas but i do love his poems and his poetry is loved for good reason! he didn't write in cymraeg, only saesneg, but he's welsh and wrote about wales and life here, and i think the fact that he wrote in english and not welsh speaks a lot about the journey our language unfortunately went on

also r.s thomas' poems about wales are always interesting to study, in particular welsh history, which has the ending lines:

when we have finished quarrelling for crumbs under the table, or gnawing the bones of a dead culture, we will arise and greet each other in a new dawn

his other poems a welsh testament, welsh landscape, the village and sorry are all really interesting as well!

niall griffiths is a great welsh author too. his books set in aberystwyth are really really good!

oh and richard king!! both his books about music and his oral histories of wales book are 11/10!!

menna gallie's work is awesome as well, i loved 'the small mine' which explores how a fictional welsh village comes together after a mining tragedy. it focuses a lot on how women in the community deal with the loss. her other books are great too and she has a really witty writing style that i enjoy a lot

a few others: owen sheers, gillian clarke and sarah waters!

not quite relevant, but still worth a mention, is the story of the soldier-poet known as hedd wyn and the eisteddfodd of 1917!

21. if you could send two things from your country into space, what would they be?

ohhhh this is really hard.. does it have to be an object or can it be like just a welsh tradition or?? oH WAIT I KNOW i'd send mari lwyd up there!!! to maybe freak out all the aliens. it's one of my favourite welsh customs and traditions for christmas! this is what it looks like:

28. does your country have a lot of lakes, mountains, rivers? do you have favourites?

oh boy! it does indeed... if you wanna know how many mountains wales has, it's better to just look at this topography map

there aren't any genuinely flat areas of wales. my high school was near the top of a mountain, and my house growing up was halfway up the same one. we hated having to walk up it every morning, and yet, we still went down to the village on our lunch hour. maybe that's why we were all fucking tiny bc we trekked up a mountain twice a day.

here's one of our rivers, which we similarly have a fuck ton of

so yeah. a shit ton of rivers and a shit ton of mountains. my favourite mountains are the brecon beacons bc we used to go there so much when i was growing up. it's like a tradition for welsh people to climb there and hike there as soon as the weather gets milder!

oh wow, sorry this was SOOOO long but it was fun to talk about these things so thank you for asking!!

for this ask game!

[rotgospels]

realising after that ask that most of my favourite poets are anglican. george herbert, christina rossetti, r.s. thomas, w.h. auden, t.s. eliot.