A poem it seems, can give way under the weight of the “things” that are crowded into it”(Davie, Articulate Energy 127-28).Davie states the need for control and intelligibility in poetry and deplores the absence of these characteristics from Thomas’s work.
The Movement’s attack on Dylan Thomas was an attention seeking revolt by young poets but there was a certain belief that his work lacked certain qualities which it would be good for poetry to repossess. This conviction also lies behind a number of Movement poems which undertake not so much to parody Thomas as to ‘revise’ him treating some of his favorite subjects in a new and more salutary manner. One such poem is Enright’s “On the Death of a Child” which revises Thomas’s “A Refusal to Mourn, the Death by fire, of a Child in London”. Thomas’s poem is distinguished by its daring metaphors, by its long rolling sentences suggestive of ‘flow of emotion ‘and by its richly suggestive final ambiguity: “After…show more content… The following are examples of the colloquial, defensive asides of much Movement poetry: “One question, though, it’s right to ask, / Or, at least, hint tactfully” (Holloway, The Minute Longer and Other Poems 6). “Yes, true; but in the end, surely we cry/ Not only at exclusion, but because/ It leaves us free to cry” (Larkin, CP 77). Better of course, if images were plain, / Warnings clearly said….” (Amis, CP 17). “For him, it seems everything was molten” (Enright, CP 56) “Yes, some accept undoubtedly was made/To lift the composition, and to pierce/ The bald tympana-vainly, I’m afraid./The effect remains, as ever, gaunt and fierce”(Davie, CP 188) .The cautious self-qualification, the sense of the presence of a responsive audience, the intentional apprehension, and the self-apology are the attitudes of these poets who qualify and protect themselves from extreme