Transcript of “Brains Hanging Out Like a Dog’s Tongue”
You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette. In the spring of 1947, Welsh poet Dylan Thomas went to Italy for four months with his family. And they spent some time on the island of Elba. And while they were there, they experienced this intense heat wave, and it made them all miserable. And he described just how miserable they were, as only Dylan Thomas could, in a letter that he wrote to a friend.
And I wanted to share part of it because it’s just so wonderful. He wrote,
I can hardly hold this pen for the blisters all over my hands, can hardly see for the waterfalls of sweat, and impealing, too, like a drenched billboard. Oh, oh, oh, the heat. It comes round corners at you like an animal with windmill arms. As I enter my bedroom, it stuns, thuds, throttles, spins me round by my soaking hair, lays me flat as a mat, and bat blind on my boiled and steaming bed.
We keep oozing from the ice cream counters to the chemists. Cold beer is bottled god. If ever for a second a wind, but winds no word for this snail slow sizzle puff, protoplasmically crawls from the suffering still sea, it makes a noise like HD’s poems crackling in a furnace.
And then later he says, my brains are hanging out like a dog’s tongue.
Wow, this is amazing.
How did he define the wind snail slow sizzle puff?
Yes, yes. He was describing the wind as a snail, slow sizzle puff.
This is so incredibly familiar. There are large parts of the world right now who are going, yes.
And I’m not sure what he meant by it makes a noise like H.D.’s poems crackling in a furnace.
He was, of course, the imagist poet who wrote in a very minimalistic style.
So I’m not sure if those poems, if he was suggesting they were really hot or what, but like poems crackling in a furnace.
Cold fear as a god.
I just loved his description.
We will post that bit of writing by Dylan Thomas on our website.
And, you know, when you’re reading and you come across something amazing,
Just a perfectly worded bit of text or prose, share it with us.
We’ll share it with everyone else.
We’d love to see it.
You can just read it into the telephone or send it an email to words@waywordradio.org.
