[Steve Mangan]

Originally Posted by W.F. Lantry

"Through periscopes rightsighted from the grave;"

Given Dylan's love of Freudian symbolism it is hard not to interpret his use here as somewhat phallic, especially in proximity to his scarlet trove, bonehead fortune and 'his grain' and falling wheat - and O, he was awfully fond of the old womb/tomb trope, the home of the 'bone' -- the 'grave-digging spade' combining sex, birth and death -- one of his most favourite subjects. It is his intentional play with Freudian themes, the stamp of Frazer together with the treatment of religious symbolism such as resurrection as an abstraction of the facts of nature and the cycles of fertility of man and earth that for me so particularly dates Thomas as a poet of his time - and a favourite of mine - but no doubt he would pretty much get short shift in a contemporary workshop setting. But sex, symbolism, sense and archaisms be damned; they are all secondary to the sheer sensational sensuality to be had surfing the sonic waves of the spoken sounds; with Dylan just submit to the ride and share in the surreal, sublunary rythyms of assonant succulence, slide along the vowels through the tunnels of consonant clumpings, allow the alliteration to blow you to shore sailing in a Venus shell in a sandscape by Dali, foaming in the froth of a heavenly seeding of letters, churning their enchanting spell, free from the affectatious fetters of contemptory fascists of fashion sat pointing their feet - he's Welsh for heaven's sake - just listen to the cadence.