{"id":16003,"date":"2015-05-05T10:08:33","date_gmt":"2015-05-05T14:08:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/?p=16003"},"modified":"2015-05-05T10:46:25","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T14:46:25","slug":"new-from-cold-turkey-press-of-dylan-and-his-deaths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2015\/05\/new-from-cold-turkey-press-of-dylan-and-his-deaths.html","title":{"rendered":"New from Cold Turkey Press: ‘Of Dylan and his Deaths’"},"content":{"rendered":"

A writer as prolific as Heathcote Williams<\/a> runs the risk of having his poems and prose taken for granted. But this essay \u2014 a memoir so rich in personal history, so evocative of his first inspiration, Dylan Thomas, and so indignant about the cultural theft of Thomas’s identity by a famous imposter \u2014 merits attention as a masterpiece of literary investigation. It stands out for high purpose even among his most provocative and polemical works<\/a>. Yet it is infused with a private tenderness that defies and surpasses moral abstraction. It has a genuineness of feeling that makes it unforgettable.
\n<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n

I asked Dylan Thomas’s trusted friend, the Welsh poet Vernon Watkins, how Dylan had thought of his own poems, and he said that Dylan had called them \u201cstatements on the way to the grave.\u201d There was a doleful pause. He went on quietly, \u201cDead poets can be your contemporaries you know, that\u2019s if the whole of the past is a simultaneous experience, and it is. In which case …\u201d He studied me closely. \u201cDylan\u2019s right here now, you see. He\u2019s sat at this table. Not dead.\u201d And then he repeated it, quite insistently, as if it was a phenomenon that he often experienced, \u201cNot dead.\u201d Heathcote Williams<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A writer as prolific as Heathcote Williams runs the risk of having his poems and prose taken for granted. But this essay \u2014 a memoir so rich in personal history, so evocative of his first inspiration, Dylan Thomas, and so indignant about the cultural theft of Thomas’s identity by a famous imposter \u2014 merits attention […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":16002,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[19,18,17],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-16003","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-art","8":"category-literature","9":"category-political-culture","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/of-dylan-and-his-deaths-cover-e1433097040449.jpeg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-4a7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16003"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16003\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16042,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16003\/revisions\/16042"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}