Thomas's poems are condensed narratives in much the same way that his prose is a logical extension of years of immersion in the poetic form. He is an unusual hybrid who has cultivated his own consciousness to create a personal myth composed of equal parts of morbid eroticism, his memory of a Cornwall childhood, a romanticization of Freud and Jung and a profound fascination for the Slavic variety of Weltschmerz. As poetry, [Thomas's Selected Poems] are most valuable for their obdurate shock value. More generally, they are admirable for their quirky, perseverant genius—an independence of mind and a courage of personal vision that are increasingly rare in the literary marketplace.

A review of "Selected Poems," in Publishers Weekly, Vol. 222, No. 24, December 17, 1982, p. 72.