The Writer's Almanac from Friday, March 29, 2013 "Meeting and Passing" by Robert Frost, from The Poetry of Robert Frost. © Holt Rinehart Winston, 1969. ORIGINAL TEXT AND AUDIO - 2013 Today is the birthday of the poet R.S. Thomas, born Ronald Stuart Thomas in Cardiff, Wales (1913). He was an Anglican clergyman, as well as a poet, until 1978, when he retired and devoted himself to the cause of Welsh nationalism. He often grew frustrated with his fellow countrymen, though, blaming them for letting their culture fade away into history. In his poem "Welsh Landscape," he called them "an impotent people, sick with inbreeding / worrying the carcass of an old song." He didn't learn the Welsh language until he was 30, and though he wrote his poetry in English, he wrote his autobiography in Welsh. He called it
"Other Things and the Aardvark." If McCarthy can pull off a book of poems with that title, he deserves a second look : )
"Other Things and the Aardvark." If McCarthy can pull off a book of poems with that title, he deserves a second look : )