When Dylan Thomas gave his first American readings on stage at the 92nd Street Y in the early 1950s, he changed poetry—and the 92nd Street Y—forever. In celebration of National Poetry Month, we are proud to share this rare recording of Dylan reading the iconic “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” before a live audience at 92Y in the winter of 1952.

Here is how John Malcolm Brinnin, who organized Dylan’s American tours as director of 92Y’s Poetry Center, described the scene in his memoir, Dylan Thomas in America:

At the appointed time, he walked onto the stage, shoulders straight, chest out in his staunch and pouter-pigeon advance, and proceeded to give the first of those performances which were to bring to America a whole new conception of poetry reading. The enormous range and organ-deep resonance of his voice as he read from Yeats, Hardy, Auden, Lawrence, MacNeice, Alun Lewis and Edith Sitwell gave new music to familiar cadences and, at times, revealed values in the poems never disclosed on the page.

When he concluded the evening with a selection of his own works encompassing both tenderly lyrical and oratorical passages with absolute authority it was difficult to know which gave the greater pleasure, the music or the meaning. Some of his listeners were moved by the almost sacred sense of his approach to language; some by the bravado of a modern poet whose themes dealt directly and unapologetically with birth and death and the presence of God; some were entertained merely by the plangent virtuosity of an actor with a great voice. In every case, the response was one of delight. Ovations greeting him as he came on and as he went off were tremendous, but the sweat on his brow flowed no less copiously either time. It was my first full and striking knowledge of the fact that Dylan was alone, that he had been born into a loneliness beyond the comprehension of those of us who feel we live in loneliness, and that those recognitions of success or failure by which we can survive meant nothing to him.

“What is a poet in our time, our world? The life and death of Dylan Thomas seems to answer that question,” wrote Tennessee Williams. “His poems are his life, the part of it that matters, the part of it that concerns you. We know that he burned and is gone. But having his voice in our ears.”

Images courtesy of The Rosalie Thorne McKenna Foundation and Harry Ransom Center.

Dylan Thomas in America: A Virtual Exhibition