College Laments Death of Thomas

University poets and critics yesterday mourned the death of Dylan Thomas, Welsh poet famous for his experiments in language. Thomas died yesterday at 39 of an undisclosed ailment.

Archibald MacLeish, Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory, and winner of a Pulitzer Prize for poetry, said last night: "There is no way of measuring a loss like this. Thomas was one of the few truly creative gifts our time has seen: not even he himself could have guessed what work he had still to do."

Much of Thomas' poetry was controversial because of his usage of symbolism and experiments with meter and word patterns. Sir Herbert Read, Charles Eliot Norton Lecturer for 1953-54, who knew Thomas well, was "deeply sorry to hear the news." He said, "Thomas was a man whom one couldn't help but love. We've certainly lost the greatest poet of his generation."

John N. D. Bush, professor of English, commented, "The early death of Dylan Thomas means the loss of a richly individual poet. He was both erratic and inspired, but at his best he had a rare intensity of vision and bardic prodigality of utterance." Bush is a specialist in 16th and 17th century poetry.

Thomas himself, when asked to explain his so-called 'difficult' poetry, had said, "I only ask that my poetry be taken literally." He called it a history of his struggle "from darkness toward some measure of light," and added that it should be "useful to others for its individual recording of that same struggle with which they are necessarily acquainted."

Thomas' first book, "19 Poems," was published in 1934 and received immediate plaudits from literary critics. The body of his work includes "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog" and several books of poetry.

His most recent work was "The Doctors and the Devils," which was published this fall.