University of Virginia Library

In this context, René Hague's A Commentary on The Anathemata (1977) deserves mention. This work, based largely on personal letters from David Jones, is an indispensable reference work for readers of the poem. The most helpful and suggestive short introduction to the poem is, in my opinion, Jeremy Hooker's David Jones, An Exploratory Study (1975), pp. 32-52.

All page references to the poem that appear in parentheses are to this edition. I am grateful to the Trustees of the Estate of David Jones for permission to publish his marginalia, and to David Jenkins and Huw Ceiriog Jones of the National Library for their kind assistance. For help in interpreting certain glosses, I owe special thanks to René Hague and William Blissett.

Many were, but not all. The glosses in both copies of the poem are entered in pencil and various coloured inks, which suggests they were made on various occasions. In both copies, the presence of corrections not incorporated in the revised edition of 1955 suggests that David Jones continued to gloss his poem after that date.

In the first section of the poem, Jones scrawled the word "Dylan" in the margin whenever he recognized the voice of Dylan Thomas. David Jones had met Dylan Thomas several times, and had once spoken with him at length about medieval Welsh poetry, Jones doing most of the talking.

See Doublas Cleverdon, "David Jones and Broadcasting," Poetry Wales 8 (Winter 1972), 78-79.

For a fuller discussion of the cyclic structure of the poem, see my essay, "The Anagogical Shape of The Anathemata," Mosaic XII (January 1979).