In marriage, she was a free spirited bohemian.
They lived in a house
called a "legendary lazy little magical bedlam by the sea"
Ours was a love story
Predominantly it could never
have got onto its rocking feet in those long-ago, mad days.
We knew light. It was essential.
Life-- raw, bleeding
A torment at the bedside as he lingered long
Settled. Life.
They had fought to gain a child.
**For my cut-up poem, I took an obituary from an archived newspaper article in the New York Times from August 3, 1994 (the day I was born), and cut it up to tell a story of birth and life.**
LONDON, Aug. 3— Caitlin Thomas, a drinking and brawling partner in marriage to the poet Dylan Thomas, died on Sunday at her home in Catania, Italy. She was 81.
No cause was given, but family members did say on Monday that her body would be taken to Wales to be buried with the poet's at Laugharne.
Mrs. Thomas, the former Caitlin MacNamara, a free-spirited daughter of a bohemian family from County Clare in Ireland, married Thomas in 1937. They had three children -- Llewelyn, Aeronwy and Colm -- and lived in a Laugharne boat house, which Thomas once called a "legendary lazy little black magical bedlam by the sea."
"Ours was not a love story proper; it was more of a drink story," Mrs. Thomas wrote in a memoir that was published in 1982. "Predominantly a drink story because without the first-aid of drink it could never have got onto its rocking feet.
"In those long-ago, wrongly romanticized, deliberately mad (they were deliberately mad), absolutely unpardonable days, our primary aim was to get ourselves noticed at any cost: to show off like crazies to gain attention. So we used shock tactics. We knew only too well that is much easier and quicker to get oneself noticed in a bad light. It was essential to give people a legend." 'Bleeding Meat'
She also described her life with Thomas as "raw, red bleeding meat," a torment of mutual infidelity that ended with her violent tantrum at the bedside of the poet as he died in 1953. Thomas died at St. Vincent's Hospital in Greenwich Village after a night of heavy drinking. He lingered long enough, however, for Mrs. Thomas to burst into his hospital room, where the comatose Thomas was being attended by another woman. In a rage, Mrs. Thomas bit an attendant and fought with bystanders until she was subdued.
She found a more settled life with Giuseppe Fazio, a Sicilian movie director. They had a son, Francesco, when she was 49, but she named him Francesco Thomas and fought to gain a share of Dylan Thomas's estate for him.
She is survived by her four children.
