18 Poems

18 Poems is a book of poetry written by the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, published in 1934 as the winner of a contest sponsored by Sunday Referee.

Written in his "womb- tomb period",[2] the poems explore dark themes of love, death and birth, employing a rich combination of sexual connotations and religious symbolism.

The lyricism and intensity of the poems in the book contrasted with the emotional restraint shown in the poetry of the successful modernist poets that worked as his contemporaries.

Critic and contemporary of Thomas, Geoffrey Grigson, said that, regarding the influence of prominent poets on Thomas, the young poet was "untainted with Eliot or with Auden [...] whose poems, though a bit unintelligible, sounded at least familiar in an old grandiloquent way.

I see the boys of summer Where once the twilight locks A process in the weather of the heart Before I knocked The force that through the green fuse My hero bares his nerves Where once the waters of your face If I were tickled by the rub of love Our eunuch dreams Especially when the October wind When, like a running grave From love's first fever In the beginning Light breaks where no sun shines I fellowed sleep I dreamed my genesis My world is pyramid All all and all