Villanelle: Do not go gentle into that good night

The villanelle that I chose is called "Do not go gentle into that good night" by Dylan Thomas. You can find it, as well as an audio clip of it, here.

In a villanelle, there are nineteen lines divided into five tercets and one quatrain. The first and third lines of the first stanza rhyme and all the first lines of the subsequent stanzas rhyme with those as well. The first line of the first stanza becomes the last line of the second and fourth stanzas, and the third line of the first stanza becomes the last line of the third and fifth stanza and both conclude the last stanza. The second line of each stanza also rhymes.

This poem discusses death and the issue of accepting death. Overall, it is very pensive and mellow. Dylan uses caesura (a short pause within a line of poetry, often but not always signaled by punctuation) in almost ever stanza to give the poem a slow, calm feeling. He also refrains from using the actual word "death," instead using a euphemism (the substitution of an agreeable or less offensive expression in place of one that might offend or suggest something unpleasant), "night."

He does not want to induce the fear that the word "death" may cause, because although each group of people he speaks of shrinks from death, does "not go gentle into" it, and even "rage[s]" against it, it is more important to see why each group reacts the way it does to death. For example, the wise men, though they understand that "dark is right," that death is inevitable and must be faced, they resist it because "their words had forked no lightning." I took that to mean that they had not yet utilized their thoughts and intelligence to create or prove anything noteworthy and felt they needed more time to live up to their potential.

Comment on this, por favor.
Questions to consider:
How does Thomas characterize each group and their reaction to death?
How does the tone (mode of expression perhaps?) change when the poem shifts to the speaker's father?

Be deaf to music and to beauty blind.

Another poet I enjoyed was Gwendolyn Brooks, so I chose her poem First Fight. Then Fiddle., which can be found on page 1026 of the Norton. Interestingly, this poem's theme is similar to that of Apostrophe to Man.

The rhyme scheme in this poem is somewhere between the Petrarchan and Shakespearean models, but when it comes to structure, it follows the Petrarchan model. Though the title of the poem says to fight first and then fiddle, the speaker dedicates the first eight lines to music. This is because the music is indeed more important to the speaker than fighting. It attests to the power of music that it can "bewitch" and "bewilder" and cause someone to "be remote / a while from malice and murdering." Brooks sticks to the sonnet form, but she tends to finish her thoughts in the middles of lines throughout the octet. This lends a different rhythm that mimics the liveliness and flow of music.

The subsequent six lines have a somewhat more "traditional" rhythm which corresponds more with the line breaks. This suggests the rigidity and structure of war, the topic of the last sestet. The shift from the octet to the sestet focuses the reader's attention to war and fighting, partially signaled by a change in diction. Compared with the "silks and honey" of the octet, the speaker's calls to "carry hate / in front of you" and to "win war. rise bloody" are drastically more violent and abrupt. The rashness of such orders as to "be deaf to music and to beauty blind" seem to suggest sarcasm, as it would not appear that she would actually want whomever she is addressing to do this. Taking this into account, the poem has an overall message of peace and that music and beauty are more important and vital than war. However, the last couplet alters this perception of the poem. The need to "civilize a space / wherein to play your violin with grace" speaks of the natural cycle of humanity, of which war, peace, music, and beauty are all necessary and natural parts.

Homo called sapiens

I really liked the sonnet I read by Edna St. Vincent Millay, so I looked at more of her poetry and enjoyed this one. It is called Apostrophe to Man and can be found here.

It is completely different from [What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why], yet it is just as striking. In the poem, which was published in 1934, Millay addresses all of man kind, on the brink of war. She uses a sarcastic tone to get her point across. Though she literally tells the human race "expunge yourself, die out," that is not what she really wants. She is commenting on the fact that the world is literally working to destroy itself. We develop new and more powerful weapons and vie to "put death on the market." She does not see the sense in this and in a way is daring man to keep doing all these things and to see what will happen. The last line, "Homo called sapiens" is mocking. Sapiens roughly means "wise." With this she wonders, if we are so wise, then why do we do this to ourselves?

Millay also uses juxtaposition and contrast to add to the power of her poem. The best example of this is the phrase: "Convert again into putrescent matter drawing flies / The hopeful bodies of the young." The actions of mankind kill its own young and wastes the potential of its younger generations. The contrast between "the hopeful bodies" and the nameless, insignificant "putrescent matter" drives her message home.

In what a beautiful silence the death is inflicted

My second external form poem this week is Evening News by David Ferry, which is on page 1048 of the Norton.

The interesting set-up of this poem leaves a lot of blank space on the page, which mirrors the "nothing" mentioned in the second and third lines. The way the lines are arranged makes the reader pause while speaking or reading and go through the poem slowly.

The pace created by the shape of the poem allows the reader to examine the juxtaposition of the language as well, which leads to the deeper meaning. "Death" and "wasted" are really the only two unpleasant words in the poem, so it is easy to glide over them amongst happy words such as "beautiful," "dazzling," and "radiantly." "The eye is instructed" by these words, which serve to gloss over the actual issue of death and destruction in the village. The shape and resulting pace of the poem helps the reader to have a discerning eye, which is necessary when watching the evening news as well, to discover the truth beneath the pleasantries.

At that awkward age now between birth and death

My first of this week's external poems is Here I Am by Roger McGough on page 1046 of the Norton.

In this poem, the speaker voices all of his regrets of things that he has not done in his life. They are not anything huge, like scaling Mt. Everest or learning to fly a plane, but rather silly, spontaneous things that he presumably held himself back from for fear or nervousness. He seems to mostly regret not living in the moment.

The poem's shape is not blaringly obvious, but it does resemble the silhouette of a woman. This provocative image represents the romanticism and adventurous sense of adventure of youth, which this man feels, to an extent, he missed out on.

when my feeble sun of life burns out

My second External Form poem is Mother Night by James Weldon Johnson which you can find here.

This poem is also an example of an Italian sonnet. Unlike my first poem, though, there is a break between the octet and the sestet, and the sestet follows the traditional rhyme scheme. The stanza break signals a shift from a wider, universal subject to a more personal application of that subject to the speaker.

The first four lines are expository. They explain that even before the sun and stars, light in general, existed, night ruled over and pacified the "chaos" that was the universe. In lines four through eight, the speaker explains that after suns and stars have "run their fiery courses," they go out and give way to the darkness of the Night. In this way, Night represents death. It also represents birth and beginning, because the suns and stars evolved out of it. Because of this, their death is a peaceful death, through which they experience "Nirvanic peace" in a state of absolute bliss and wholeness.

In the second stanza, the speaker uses similar terms of light and dark to relate himself to the suns and stars. He (like Hamlet!) will accept death when it is his time to go and almost be relieved of it. The "feverish light" of his life sounds more of a nuisance than a blessing, and, "feeble," does not appear to be wanted all that much. The weight and brunt of living has tired him, so he will gladly crawl into the comforting "quiet bosom" of maternal "Night."

For unremembered lads

My first External Form poem is [What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why] by Edna St. Vincent Millay. It is on page 1030-1031 of the Norton.

This poem follows the structure of an Italian sonnet, divided into an octet and a sestet, although the rhyme scheme of the sestet varies from the standard (instead of cdecde, it is cdedce). The octet tells of the speaker's real life, and the sestet transitions into a metaphor for her ultimately solitary, lonely life.

At first the poem seems sort of romantic as it tells of all the affairs the speaker has had, but then the reader realizes that she does not remember the men behind the sex and that she has not had anything meaningful with these men. The first explicitly sad image comes in the third and fourth lines, when "the rain / is full of ghosts," the shadows of her forgotten lovers. After that point, the octet takes on a definitively more melancholic tone. The speaker has left these men behind, but they still "tap and sigh / upon the glass" looking for love. She admits that she does feel bad for them and the triviality of their fleeting relationships.

In the following sestet the reader sees a bare tree standing alone in the cold, barren winter. The tree does not remember all the birds that have left its branches, but once they are all gone, it realizes how quiet and lonely it is, which is how the speaker feels after all the men and one-night stands have faded away. The last two lines present the happy image of "the summer sang in me," but only for a little while, reminiscent of the momentary satisfaction of the speaker's affairs that leave her with nothing once they are over.