Dec 29, 2009

Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night | Sound and Sense in Dylan Thomas's Poetry

In the following excerpt, Burdy explores the structure and depth of "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night."

"Do not go gentle into that good night" is perhaps too often considered lightly as only simple iteration. Cid Corman even believes that "the set form of the villanelle treads Thomas's feet." By definition the villanelle is restrictive, because it demands nineteen lines on two rhymes in six stanzas, the first and third lines of the opening tercet recurring alternately at the end of the other tercets, both being repeated at the end of the concluding quatrain. Within this structure, however, Thomas creates a poem of great force, beauty, and tenderness, in which sound and sense are...