At first read, Dylan Thomas seems to be writing an ode to poets and poetry writing. In keeping with Thomas’s long-professed admiration for the Bardic tradition in Gaelic poetry, the poet/speaker in the poem, presumably Thomas himself, seems to celebrate his heroic commitment to his art, describing himself as a lone figure toiling in the night when others are “abed” (Line 4). This self-mythologizing imagery syncs with some biographical details: Thomas earned fame from his sensationalized reading and lecture tours of American colleges and universities in the early 1950s, becoming a well-known figure.

But this celebrity came after long relative obscurity; by the time of composition, Thomas’s most noted poems were nearly 10 years in the past, somewhat irrelevant and out of date (Methven, Paul. “‘In my craft or sullen art’. A new (2022) comprehensive study of Dylan Thomas’s renowned poem of self-examination.” Academia. 2022). Likewise, at its core, the poem is a rejection of celebrity and success—a long list of the kinds of material measures of accomplishment that the speaker refuses to pursue. Instead, the poem proposes that the ideal readers are unaware of the poem or the poet’s existence because they are too wrapped up in lovemaking and “all their griefs” (Line 5).