Kushner, the poetry editor for Neworld Renaissance Magazine, earned an M.A. in creative writing fromBoston University. In the following essay, Kushner describes how "The Force That through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower" "can be read as an ode to life or a meditation on death. "

A legend. That's what Dylan Thomas remains for the thousands of people who heard him read during several U.S. lecture tours in the 1950s. Thomas's trance-inducing, powerful voice, which rolled rs and trilled Is, has been described by dozens of enthralled American writers and also chronicled by all kinds of ordinary folks who felt personally touched by a genius. In those electrifying readings, Thomas reportedly began by reading poems by greats like William Butler Yeats and T.S. Eliot and then moved on to his own work.

But the hypnotizing "genius effect" of Thomas the man had an equally...