Chapter 4. Dylan Thomas’s meters

This chapter applies to Dylan Thomas’s metrical poetry the theory of meter developed in collaboration with Carlos Piera in Fabb and Halle (2008). We explain the various properties of the strict and loose meters used by Thomas. We also discuss some poems which can be analyzed as simultaneously in two meters at the same time: a strict syllable-counting meter and a loose stress-based meter. These polymetrical poems may reflect the influence, possibly mediated through Gerard Manley Hopkins, of the Welsh poetic tradition.