a Letter To My Ount

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“A Letter to My Aunt:” From Comparison of Modern Poetry into Subjective Glorification and Criticism “A Letter to my Aunt” is a poem written by the poet from Wales Dylan Thomas. “Dylan Thomas' parents were both speakers of the Welsh language and had strong links to Welsh cultures and customs, but brought up their children to speak only English. This was a carefully made decision: Uplands was a largely Anglicised area and many other children born to Welsh speakers in the area were likewise brought up to speak only in English.” This imposed nationalist ideology from Thomas’ parents, had an impact on him, not just in his personal life, but in his writings as well. This is visible in “A Letter to my Aunt,” since none of the poets and writers he glorifies on his poem are English (Geoffrey Grigson and W.H Auden lived only partially in England). In fact the only Englishmen in this poem, David Gascoyne, a surrealist poet, is lampooned by Thomas. This is another indication for Thomas’ anti-English sentiments. Dylan Thomas would rather be compared to Ezra Pound (a very famous American poet, who strongly influenced the development of modern literature), who just like Thomas was committed in a mental institution, than being compared to Gascoyne. The poem was first published in his poetry collection book “Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas 1934-1952” in 1952. “A Letter to my Aunt” is a satire, in verse, of an aunt's poetic pretensions. Thomas’ means is to discuss the “correct” approach to modern poetry (which ironically is the sub-title and the subtext of the poem). “The satire of A Letter to my Aunt has two targets; apart of the obvious one, Thomas aims a few shafts at himself, at his fondness for half-rhymes (‘limpet,’ ‘strumpet’), his obsession with his charnel-house (‘each rose is wormy’ Thomas, line 48) and his short flirtation with surrealism, of which David
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