With it’s tight structure, poetry can accommodate great passion. Do
you agree with this statement? You should base your answer on a close
examination of two or three poems covering at least two groups.
‘With it’s tight structure, poetry can accommodate great passion’.
Do you agree with this statement? You should base your answer on a
close examination of two or three poems covering at least two groups.
Although it could be argued that poetry can accommodate great passion
I disagree with this statement. The two poems I have chosen to
examine, ‘Marged’ by Gillian Clarke and ‘Do Not Go Gentle into That
Good Night’ by Dylan Thomas, show different emotions that I believe
disprove the statement. The first, ‘Marged’, is lacking in emotion
and the second, ‘Do Not Go Gentle’, does more than accommodate the
passion, it emphasises and releases the feelings felt by the poet.
‘Marged’ by Gillian Clarke is a Shakespearean sonnet, with three
quatrains and a couplet at the end, however the poet has altered the
form to change the style of the poem. For example the lines do not
have ten syllables as a normal sonnet but vary in length. Also there
is only a half-rhyme scheme with words such as ‘bed’ and ‘died’ in the
first quatrain on alternate lines. It could be argued that the tight
structure of the sonnet restrains the passion felt because of the
syllables but as Gillian Clarke has ignored this rule and has
different numbers of syllables this sonnet does not constrain
passion. This argument would apply more if Clarke had written a
passionate poem but as it is the poem is lacking in emotion of any
kind. ‘Marged’ is about Clarke thinking of the previous owner of the
house she lives in. The words do not emote a sad mood; Clarke is
remembering the dead old lady but is herself distanced from the death
and therefore does not feel sad. The use of the preposition ‘she’
shows the reader that the feelings are distanced; use of ‘you’ would
have made the poem more direct and emotional.
In contrast to this, ‘Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night’ by Dylan
Thomas is a very emotional poem in the traditional form of a
villanelle. 'Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night' is addressed to
the poets father and is plea that the man doesn’t die quietly. The
use of ‘you’ makes the poem very personal and it is clear from the
start of the poem that the poet feels very strongly about the issue.
In the title and first line the emphasis is on the words ‘Not’ and
In the poem "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night," written by Dylan Thomas, emphasizes resistance towards death as he repeats this exhortation in the last line in every stanza. Imagery is used by Thomas to create the theme of his poem and what it means. Although readers are unaware of the details behind the on coming death of Thomas father, the motives of the author for writing this poem are very obvious. Thomas intends to pursuit his father to resist against death and for him to fight for life. Through "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night," Thomas conveys resistance towards death with images of fury and fighting to symbolize the great anger and rage Thomas feels towards the thought of loosing his dying father, though upon first reading then seem banal.
Dylan Thomas' "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" and Catherine Davis' "After a Time" demand comparison: Davis' poem was written in deliberate response to Thomas'. Davis assumes the reader's familiarity with "Do Not Go Gentle," which she uses to articulate her contrasting ideas. "After a Time," although it is a literary work in its own right, might even be thought of as serious parody--perhaps the greatest compliment one writer can pay another.
Dylan Thomas wrote the poem “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.” It is about a son’s plea to his father who is approaching death. Two lines are repeated in the poem and addressed directly to the father. These lines structure the first stanza and collaborate as a couplet in the last. They are repeated a lot but each time, they have different meanings: statements, pleas, commands, or petitions. Repetition and rhyme scheme are parts of prosody in poetry. The rhyme scheme is built on two rhymes and forms of a pattern. The two rhymes are night and day and the pattern is aba, and in the last stanza, abaa. Even though the poem seems to have too much repetition, the fascinating imagery is more important and readers pay more attention to that instead.
Dylan Thomas sets the tone of his iconic poem with the title, which is also one of the recurring lines in the poem. When the speaker says “Do not go gentle into that good night”(1,6,12,18), he is saying that you should not peacefully accept death. In most cases, many people would consider a peaceful death as good of a death as there can be, but Thomas urges the reader to not accept it. While it may seem like an odd stance, one must consider that towards the end of the poem we learn the speaker is speaking to his father. In context of the poem, this is someone struggling to accept that his father is dying therefore he is begging his father to also not accept it. Another way Dylan Thomas is able to not only reinforce the defiant tone, but also reinforce the central message, is his repetition of critical
When reviewing the work of Dylan Thomas, one can see that he changes his style of language, such as using metaphors and imagery, to fit each poem accordingly. In the poems, "Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night," and "Fern Hill," which are the poems I will be looking at in this presentation, he uses different techniques and language to make each poem more effective to the reader. I have chosen these works because they are his most well known, I shall start off by reading the poem “Do Not Go Gentle…” even if it was written after Fern Hill, as it is the most famous of all his works. "Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night" is addressed to Thomas' father, giving him advice on how he should die. The poem is a villanelle, which is a type of French pastoral lyric. It was not found in English literature until the late nineteenth century. It derives from peasant life, originally being a type of round sung. It progressed throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to its present form. For Dylan Thomas, its strictly disciplined rhyme scheme and verse format provided the framework through which he expresses "both a brilliant character analysis of his father and an ambivalent expression of his love towards him"(Magill 569 ).
In today’s modern view, poetry has become more than just paragraphs that rhyme at the end of each sentence. If the reader has an open mind and the ability to read in between the lines, they discover more than they have bargained for. Some poems might have stories of suffering or abuse, while others contain happy times and great joy. Regardless of what the poems contains, all poems display an expression. That very moment when the writer begins his mental journey with that pen and paper is where all feelings are let out. As poetry is continues to be written, the reader begins to see patterns within each poem. On the other hand, poems have nothing at all in common with one another. A good example of this is in two poems by a famous writer by the name of Langston Hughes. A well-known writer that still gets credit today for pomes like “ Theme for English B” and “Let American be American Again.”
Poetry may be the hardest form of literature to examine, at least for me. After reading some of our assigned poems this semester I was left completely confused, as to not only the authors purpose, but also the relevance and importance of the poem; None ...
Each of the following poems, ‘Mixed Emotions’, ‘Porphyria's Lover’, and ‘This be the Verse’, convey the receptivity of destructive emotions and how these may cause people to act or behave. Although the poems have some similarities, each of the poets, Hauge, Browning and Larkin, have a different style of presenting these emotions. This can be seen through the enjambment in mixed emotions, and the contrast with Browning's caesura's and end stops.
"Characteristics of Modern Poetry - Poetry - Questions & Answers." ENotes - Literature Study Guides, Lesson Plans, and More. Web. 09 Jan. 2012. .
Most of students who study literature have experienced a trouble when they understand poetry. There are many genres in literature; poem, novel, drama, myth and so on. Generally, people do not have a difficult comprehension of a variety of literary genres except poem. In case of poem, even people read a poem, they do not understand what that means perfectly. Because, unlike other genres of literature, poetry consists of short sentences. Some of poems are not made up of grammatically correct sentences. Also, poetry has implications. Sometimes, the words a poet use have a different meaning, unlike original meaning. A figure of speech helps expression of topic of a poem more effectually. Theme relates to a mood and is an important clue what the poet want to say. Both “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” and “Because I Not Stop for Death” have a theme of death. Compare and contrast the figure of speech and the theme of death in the poem Dylan Thomas’s “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” and Emily Dickinson’s “Because I could Not Stop for Death” in this research paper.
When discussing the different aspects of New Criticism in Dylan Thomas’s poem “Do Not Go Gentle into The Good Night”, the impression that comes to mind is death. The use of imagery was a necessity for Dylan Thomas to express the different techniques of writing which involved a mixture of surrealistic and metaphysical tones. His ability to change a words meaning to incorporate symbolism is noticeable in circle of unity from life to death and renewed life.
When reading poetry sometimes one assumes that it is automatically an awesome poem because it is published in a book. Sometimes people also automatically assumes that if the poet is well known in literature, that his or her poem is automatically the greatest work of all. For example, one may assume that Shakespeare’s work is automatically great because his literature is used widespread in today’s society. But what one may not know about Shakespeare’s work in literature is that it was not seen as great as it is in today’s society. So the question we are left with is, what makes a poem great? Or on the other hand what makes a poem bad? A poem may be a great poem depending on its reader. No two person are alike in everything they do. People listen to different type of music, prefer different type of movies and believe it or not people are very selective about where they get lunch from, so why wouldn’t they be selective about what they read? When I was going through the anthology I fell in love with the poem “The Tale of Custard the Dragon” and thought it was a great because I love fairytale stories and poem, but if someone dislikes fairytale like things would despise this poem base on its content and its rhythm. Whether a poem is good or bad depends on the opinion of the reader and his or her point of view on the topic, rhythm, rhyme and flow of the poem.
Dylan Thomas' poem "Do not go gentle into that good night" is about a son’s bereavement and the acceptance of his father dying. Thomas knows death is inevitable, therefore, he uses persuasion to get his father to "rage, rage against the dying of the light” (Line 3). Villanelle poems require two repeating rhyme schemes. Thomas helps the reader visualize dark and light. : “Wise men… know dark is right” (4). “Wild men… sang the sun in flight/do not go gentle into that good night” (10,12). “Eyes…blaze like meteors” (14).
Sir Thomas Wyatt is credited as one of the first poets to bring the sonnet form into English literature, a form in which the speaker’s sincerity for, most commonly, a distant mysterious woman whom he loves, is believed to be the focal point of the poetry. From the selection of works which Wyatt wrote we can see many point in which the focal point is seemingly the earnestness of his love for his muse as authenticated by what he states in the poem itself. However, there is a sense of underlying meaning throughout his works which the reader must tease out themselves to see that that in fact is the focal point of his poetry.
The Theme of Love in Poetry Love is a very common theme in poetry. By closely examining the ways in which two poets(one must be pre 1900) have explored this theme. Show what you have found to be similar/different in their handling of this theme. Many people have different views on love. Many of these views throughout the ages are explored through poetry as love has much contemporary relevance in today's society as it ever did before.