Do Not Go Gentle

Dylan Thomas' villanelle was my favorite. Maybe it was because of the serious and morbid tone, which I find myself gravitating towards. All three poems were obviously pretty accurate representations of the villanelle form, portraying the correct stanza form and repetition of lines. It is hard to say which is best, but this is my personal favorite. Reading about the villanelle I realized that because of the repetition of that one line, within this form of poem, a storyline is not possible. I wonder if this format was created to put emphasis on the core meaning of the poem rather than wasting time dishing out a tale, or if that was an unexpected byproduct of the repetition thing. Because of this, every stanza is a sort of "variation on a theme". Each one discusses a different type of man, living a different kind of life and facing death a different way. They are all facing the same situation but respond differently, thus emphasizing the core meaning of the poem. This poem was the hardest for me to read, twofold. It is a little cryptic in its language, but also I was heavily distracted by the furious and powerful word choice "rage, rage" and found myself reading that line over and over. I suppose the recurrences of death and resistance did effectively pound into me as I read.