"Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" by Dylan Thomas

Born in Wales on October 27, 1914, Dylan Thomas was a well known poet and journalist. He wrote much as a teenager, and was even published for some of it, but his "Light breaks where no sun shines" is what brought him to fame initially. Thomas was often called a drunk which led to his marriage with Caitlin Macnamara to be weak. Even though successful as a poet, Thomas struggled to provide for himself, so he took up various jobs that increased his popularity. He died November 9, 1953.

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

The form Thomas’s poem takes is that of a villanelle, a nineteen line poem with a very specific structure in the sense of rhyme and repetition. This type of poem consists of five tercets, a quatrain, and includes two lines acting as the refrain. The rhyme scheme is “aba” which repeats in the other tercets, but the final stanza ends with an extra “a.” Through the use of such a narrowly ranging rhyme scheme, the attention of the reader is drawn to the end of each line, curious of what new word will be written, effectively encouraging the reader to want to continue reading. The two lines of the refrain are each written four times in the poem, often concluding each stanza. The idea is to have a refrain with such a profound meaning that it can begin the poem as well as close it. The refrain must be carefully selected, too, so that after each stanza it is used in, a new interpretation can be applied. In this instance, the refrain conveys the message to never forfeit without giving everything first. Although meter is not a requirement in a villanelle, Thomas writes “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” in iambic pentameter, creating a simple, steady beat. In the second line of the refrain, however, “Rage, rage” is a spondee that diverges from this pattern and directs the readers’ focus on these words that are meant to excite and inspire them to “not go gentle into that good night.”

"The Twenty-third Psalm" by Anonymous

Coming from the Book of Psalms from the Bible, there is no accepted author. Although some believe many psalms were King David, many only accept the fact that the writer(s) was anonymous and inspired by God as they wrote.

The Lord is my shepherd: I shall not want: 

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: He leadeth me beside still waters,

He restoreth my soul, He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness, For His name’s sake.

Yea, though I walk in the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no eveil, For Thou are near me.

Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.

Thou prepares a table before me in the presence of mine enemies; Thou anointest my head with oil; My cup runneth over. 

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever I will dwell with him forever.

Due to the fact that this poem originates from the Book of Psalms, the reader should immediately be aware of the likelihood of there being a religious message and reference to God. The metaphor within the poem is clearly stated in the first line, “The Lord is my shepherd.” Comparing God to a shepherd does two things. The first thing is that it forms the metaphor which is expanded on throughout the poem. This metaphor explains that God’s followers are the sheep, and He will lead them to Heaven if they follow. He is always at the side of anyone in need to reassure them that all will be alright as long as they follow. He will keep them safe. Of all of the lifestyles and jobs to equate God to, a shepherd is most accurate because of the connotation that it carries. A shepherd is someone who is strong enough to lead a herd safely but still gentle enough to tend to a fragile lamb. The second thing comparing God to a shepherd does is convert the shepherd into a symbol. God the Father can be considered a shepherd because Jesus is most commonly described as the Lamb of God, and because we are the children of God just like Jesus, who is His literal child, we too can be seen as the lambs of God. The shepherd then, becomes a symbol for God.

"At the San Francisco Airport" by Yvor Winters

Yvor Winters was born October 17, 1900 in Chicago but moved to California for his childhood. He attended the University of Chicago, the University of Colorado, and Stanford. During this time, he overcame tuberculosis, worked as a poet, and also taught. Winters met his wife, Janet Lewis, at college who also became poet. In 1961, he was awarded the Bollingen Prize for Poetry for his peice Collected Poems. He died January 25, 1968.

To my daughter, 1954

This is the terminal: the light

Gives perfect vision, false and hard;

The metal glitters, deep and bright.

Great planes are waiting in the yard—

They are already in the night.

And you are here beside me, small,

Contained and fragile, and intent

On things that I but half recall—

Yet going whither you are bent.

I am the past, and that is all.

But you and I in part are one:

The frightened brain, the nervous will,

The knowledge of what must be done,

The passion to acquire the skill

To face that which you dare not shun.

The rain of matter upon sense

Destroys me momently. The score:

There comes what will come. The expense

Is what one thought, and something more—

One’s being and intelligence.

This is the terminal, the break.

Beyond this point, on lines of air,

You take the way that you must take;

And I remain in light and stare—

In light, and nothing else, awake.

The title establishes the setting of poem to be at the airport. The connotation of an airport presents a vast variety of possibilities occurring. These possibilities would be that someone is either leaving or returning home or someone is there to witness another arrive or depart. The first stanza describes the terminal itself with a sense of awe at the lights, the metal, and the planes. It also states that the temporal setting is night which has a negative connotation. Not only does night often foreshadow an unfortunate event taking pace, but the darkness also creates a sense of mystery, or unsureness of what may come. Clearly, second stanza is focused on the speaker’s daughter, made evident by her description with delicate words. Therefore, the mother feels protective that her daughter is leaving, for she believes she could be too young. At the same time, though, the mother recognizes she must leave to find her own future, and in the third stanza, she notes the features of her daughter that remind her of herself. The fourth stanza demonstrates the pain the mother is feeling as she watches her daughter leave with powerful words such as “destroys me.” The final stanza contains the daughter departing and the mother staying behind in the light. By beginning this stanza the same as the first, the author compares the darkness of night and the light she is under. The daughter is leaving into the darkness, an uncertain path that can take her any way she chooses. The mother stands in the light with no more uncertainty in the direction her life is heading.

"The Night-Wind" by Emily Bronte

Emily Bronte was born on July 30, 1818. Northern England. She was one of 4 children to survive to childhood. Her two sisters, Anne and Charlotte, are now well known poets and novelists just like Emily. Emily lived only until age thirty when she died from tuberculosis three months after her brother. She wrote only one novel in her lifetime, Wuthering Height, which is considered a classic in English Literature. She also wrote several poems under the pseudonyms Ellis Bell.

In summer's mellow midnight,

A cloudless moon shone through

Our open parlour window,

And rose-trees wet with dew.

I sat in silent musing;

The soft wind waved my hair;

It told me heaven was glorious,

And sleeping earth was fair.

I needed not its breathing

To bring such thoughts to me;

But still it whispered lowly,

How dark the woods will be!

"The thick leaves in my murmur

Are rustling like a dream,

And all their myriad voices

Instinct with spirit seem."

I said, "Go, gentle singer,

Thy wooing voice is kind:

But do not think its music

Has power to reach my mind.

"Play with the scented flower,

The young tree's supple bough,

And leave my human feelings

In their own course to flow."

The wanderer would not heed me;

Its kiss grew warmer still.

"O come!" it sighed so sweetly;

"I'll win thee 'gainst thy will.

"Were we not friends from childhood?

Have I not loved thee long?

As long as thou, the solemn night,

Whose silence wakes my song.

"And when thy heart is resting

Beneath the church-aisle stone,

I shall have time for mourning,

And thou for being alone."

The two characters in this poem are the person and the wind. Because of the way the person describes the spatial setting such in a gentle way, one can assume it is a woman. This spatial setting is in a parlor near a forest. The temporal setting does not specify the year in which the poem is taking place, but what is given is the time of year. It is nighttime on a calm and peaceful summer day without a cloud in the sky. The moon is lighting the sky as a faint breeze caresses the woman. This breeze tempts the woman to come out into the dark forest, to get lost in the wilderness and in nature. The wind then can be seen as an extended metaphor for the woman’s imagination that is trying to dominate her thoughts. The situation, therefore, is the woman resisting the wind, or her imagination, consuming her mind. She is trying to keep her mind from going off on a tangent and daydreaming the night away. When taking into consideration the historical context, this fear of having unique, individualized thoughts as a woman becomes more understandable. In the 1840s when Bronte wrote this piece, women had significantly less of a role in society than today, so a different lens must be looked through to derive the meaning of the poem, a lens where women were raised to be less independent. This is why she resists the wind, her imagination, even when it was so tempting to her.

"Hanging Fire" by Audre Lorde

Audre Lorde was a proclaimed supporter of civil rights, homosexuality, feminism, often writing about one, if not more, into her works. Her main focus in writing was on poetry and essays which encapsulated her views and injustices she witnessed in the world. She is known for her strong use of pathos, or emotional appeal, in her pieces to express the fervor she had for the topic.

I am fourteen

and my skin has betrayed me

the boy I cannot live without

still sucks his thumb

in secret

how come my knees are

always so ashy

what if I die

before morning

and momma's in the bedroom

with the door closed.

I have to learn how to dance

in time for the next party

my room is too small for me

suppose I die before graduation

they will sing sad melodies

but finally

tell the truth about me

There is nothing I want to do

and too much

that has to be done

and momma's in the bedroom

with the door closed.

Nobody even stops to think

about my side of it

I should have been on Math Team

my marks were better than his

why do I have to be

the one

wearing braces

I have nothing to wear tomorrow

will I live long enough

to grow up

and momma's in the bedroom

with the door closed.

In order to understand the meaning of a poem, one must first determine the tone of the piece. Before one can decide on what the tone is, however, the speaker must be identified. “Hanging Fire” by Audre Lorde is a poem written in the first person point of view from the perspective of a fourteen year old girl, as stated in the first line, who seems overwhelmed by the conflicts she is having to face through puberty. She is the speaker. The style in which this work is written is a stream of consciousness. In other words, the poem is written as though it were directly the thoughts of the teenage girl. This is apparent from the sudden jumps between what she is thinking about and the lack of punctuation aside from the period at the end of each stanza. With the speaker now addressed, the tone can be accurately described as despondent and dismal. The main portion of the poem is the girl finding flaws with herself. Whether it is physical, not making a team, or even who she fell in love with, she is incredibly critical. Also in each of the three stanzas, the girl contemplates how people would be affected if she were to die, a topic no adolescent should have to consider. All of the stanzas conclude with the same two lines saying her mother is away in the bedroom. One way this could be interpreted is that her mother, being locked in the bedroom, is rarely a part of her life, and the lack of mention of her father means he also is not in her life. Lorde uses the thoughts of a distraught and depressed teenage girl to convey how hard a young girl is on herself, and how that is exacerbated in a broken home.

"Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden

Robert Hayden was born August 4, 1913 and died on February 25, 1980. His childhood was difficult because he was raised in a poor part of Detriot where he bounced between houses of his parents and of foster homes. After attending the Universtiy of Michigan and Wayne State University, he taught at Michigan, then at Fick University, and then again at Michigan. By 1976, Hayden became the first African American to be named as, what is known today as, the U.S. Poet Laureate. He died in Ann Arbor at the age of sixty-six.

Sundays too my father got up early 

and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold, 

then with cracked hands that ached 

banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him. 

from labor in the weekday weather made 




When the rooms were warm, he’d call, 

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking. 

and slowly I would rise and dress, 

who had driven out the cold 

fearing the chronic angers of that house, 

Speaking indifferently to him, 

and polished my good shoes as well. 

of love’s austere and lonely offices? 

What did I know, what did I know 

of love's austere and lonely offices?



In “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden, the theme of the poem can only be derived if the reader takes into consideration the tone in which Hayden is writing. With careful use of diction, Hayden looks back at all the things his father did for him with a sense of remorse rather than nostalgia. The poem begins with “Sundays too” instead of “On Sundays” because he wants to show the reader that his father did these little acts for him, not just on some days, but on every day of the week including Sunday, the one day that people usually do not and relax. This poem is reflecting on how Hayden’s father would work so hard for him, but at the time Hayden did not recognize how caring he was being. The first stanza ends with the telegraphic sentence, “No one ever thanked him.” Ending a stanza with such brevity usually means it is an important point the author wants the reader to consider. In this case, the sentence has two effects on the reader. First, it shows the remorse in Hayden’s voice because when people are sad or reflecting on an upsetting memory, they tend to be short. Second, the reader begins to wonder if his father has passed away. If this is indeed what has happened, part of the reason Hayden is so distressed about this subject is because now that he realizes all that his father did for him, he will never have the chance to thank him for it. This tone of regret is consistent throughout the whole poem and defines the theme of the poem which is to recognize what we have and be thankful for it. 

"Ars Poetica" by Archibald MacLeish

Archibald MacLeish, May 7, 1892 – April 20, 1982, was an American poet who wrote "Ars Poetica" in 1926 as a tribute and interpretation of Horace's poem, "Ars Poetica." Graduating first in his class from Yale and Harvard, MacLeish went on to serve in Wold War I. After this, he became the Librarian of Congress who has the power to choose the U.S. Poet Laureate. He then worked as a college professor and, by the end of his life, had accumulated three Pulitzer Awards recognizing him as a writer and a poet.

A poem should be palpable and mute   

As a globed fruit,

Dumb

As old medallions to the thumb,

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone

Of casement ledges where the moss has grown—

A poem should be wordless   

As the flight of birds.

                         *               

A poem should be motionless in time   

As the moon climbs,

Leaving, as the moon releases

Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,   

Memory by memory the mind—

A poem should be motionless in time   

As the moon climbs.

                         *               

A poem should be equal to:

Not true.

For all the history of grief

An empty doorway and a maple leaf.

For love

The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea—

A poem should not mean   

But be.

In the original “Ars Poetica,” Horace goes into great detail about the different aspects of poetry and how poems should be written. This work is 476 lines of Horace teaching the reader how to properly write poetry in his opinion. Archibald MacLeish takes the concept of what Horace is trying to convey and puts his own personal touch on it. In his short, twenty-four line poem, MacLeish avoids telling the reader about all of the different traditional structures poetry should include. Instead, he emphasizes the effect poetry should have on a reader. He does not talk about what the poem should include in a literal sense, but rather he states how it should feel in the figurative sense.


Throughout the poem, MacLeish compare poetry to fruit, coins, ledges, birds flying, and the moon in the form of similes. By comparing poetry to so many vastly different objects, MacLeish shows that every poem should be and will be unique. He wants poetry to be eternal and “be motionless in time.” The only way to achieve this is to withdraw from writing poems with meaning and try to write them to include feeling. He wants poetry to be something that conveys more than just a message. In the last two lines, he writes, “A poem should not mean/But be.” By saying this, MacLeish is instructing poets to, instead of writing poetry about a lesson that might become irrelevant with time, write poetry to evoke emotions that are timeless.