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A Favorite Poem of Mine



Have you seen this poem before?

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Tue Jul 11, 2017 2:05 am
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Aley says...



Hey everyone,

I thought we might take a little time this month to look at poems we love. For me, the one I want to share with you is one about death, and it's a structured poem, but I don't want to talk about death or structure, I want to talk about something else. I want to share.

That being said, here's the poem.

Do not go gentle into that good night
Dylan Thomas, 1914 - 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.


It seems simple, right? Well the first time I heard it read out loud, I cried.

Some of you may know this, but many of you may not. When I was in high school [your ages] my mother was incredibly sick. She got a disease that was making it hard for her to do typical things like walk, repeat herself, lift her arm, and fight off illnesses like the common cold or the flu.

I was in eleventh grade when I heard this poem, and my mother had been sick for a long time. She got sick my freshman year in High School, or deathly sick anyway, and at the time, she was still undiagnosed. I thought she was going to die. I really did.

I had spent the past three years preparing myself for the day my mom was going to die because of some illness, or because she stumbled since she was dizzy all the time, or because she drove off the road into a tree. When I heard this poem, it struck me hard because it was exactly what I wanted my mother to do, and I saw my mother in it too.

She was fighting against the people who made her sick, she was bringing in OCEA to her workplace to clean it up, and she was practically sueing them with allegations. The only difference is that we wouldn't get compensation for it, she would be getting to keep her job, and her job couldn't harass her or fire her for the illness they caused.

To me, "Rage, rage against the dying of the light" was the most heartfelt plea I had ever heard.

When I found out the poem was a villanelle, when I found out it was written in iambic pentameter, and that the lines rhymed, when I found out it was written about a son watching his father die from old age, I just absorbed the information. I didn't register it. I remembered the poem so viscerally it was like the words had burned me, scared me, and I could never let them go.

As I grew older, and my mom got better, I was able to read the poem again without the shadow of dread the poem made me feel, but I still come back to it and listen to it, I still read it because I remember that time in my life when I had to be strong. I couldn't talk about what was going on with my mother at first because of OCEA, and then because I didn't know how to talk about it, or what to say, what words would express it properly aside from those above, and eventually, I learned to write about it myself. That was the first way I opened up about my feelings for my mother, poetry.

I wanted to share this poem with you, and this story, because I think it's something we can all rally behind. This poem may be about death in the short-term, but it's about life in the undertones. It's about the way we fight through hardship, and suffering. We "rage, rage against the dying of light" every day we fight to get up when we are sick, or tired. We "do not go gentle into that good night" as we distort it with our flashlights, our monitors, our phones, or even our defiance in the face of adversity and the temptations of death.

I think the dance here in this poem, these lines about wild youth, and our desires to be remembered, is one of the most beautiful I have found.

With the story over, I suppose I should pose a question so we can talk, huh? Well. What are your thoughts on this poem? What stands out to you? I've told you what stood out to me, now it's your turn. Let's talk.

I'll tag some people to get us talking
Spoiler! :
@Lumi @Kyllorac @alliyah @Morrigan @Nikayla @Rosendorn @marms @Audy @LadyLizzLovelace

Know someone I forgot? Tag them in your comment. We can play 'pass the talking stick' if we all poke someone after we talk.
  





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Tue Jul 11, 2017 3:59 am
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alliyah says...



@Aley, thank you so much for sharing your story and experience with this poem, I can't imagine having to go through all of what you did with your mother. But I can definitely relate to having poetry that seems to define a moment or be able to speak the truth when nothing else can.

I'm going to go right into one of the discussion questions that you suggested:

What stands out to you
I think my main poetic take-away from this poem, is that this piece is an example of repetition done right. That repetition of "rage, rage against the dying of the light" and the "do not go gentle into the night" are so expertly done. The repetition communicates (at least to me) both the urgency and fervor of the request. And although at first those two phrases seem to be similarly communicating "don't go to the night" the slight difference of "do not go gentle" and "rage" I think are really important.

"Do not go gentle" (for me, at least) communicates a more passive "don't give up" while "rage, rage" is saying to be fully active against death, to fight against it. The trade between those two is an important tension in the poem. On one hand the speaker can be heard as being strong, courageous, and active on another hand maybe they are just scared out of their mind, weak, desperate... and maybe they can even be both at once? I think this tension is really at the heart of the poem -- where that line between being strong even in death and what that looks like is. And then there's that stark vulnerability expressed in the last stanza when the speaker goes from the almost theoretical is speaking of other men to the very personal by saying "you, my father"... "curse, bless me now".

I think the beauty of this poem in particular is that it's able to be interpreted in both those ways, either pleading or victoriously declaring that we will not go gently into the light.

Another thought that I have on this poem which may be irrelevant or misdirected, is that something about it reminds me of John Donne's Holy Sonnet 10 "Death, be not proud" in that both poems choose not to completely romanticize death, while also pointing to the gravity of it and the war waged against it.

Those are just some of the first thoughts that came to mind, but I'd love to hear what others are thinking.
Spoiler! :
Just tagging a few more I think might be interested in the discussion @tgirly @Casanova @Lightsong
you should know i am a time traveler &
there is no season as achingly temporary as now
but i have promised to return
  





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Tue Jul 11, 2017 4:26 am
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Virgil says...



@Aley I'm glad your mother is alive as well. I might as well share this here too since it's not something that I tell everyone, though I believe that this is appropriate to the discussion.

This hits hard, actually! I've read it before, though I've never thought about it in the context of my mother. For most of my life, my mother's been sick. Rheumatoid arthritis. GERD. TMJ. Barrett's Esophagus. You get the point. I can see how this can be hard-hitting, especially since at the time you were almost waiting or expecting for her to pass away, even though you hoped otherwise.

However, I don't believe that this poem struck the same chord with you as it did with me. I can feel the emotion here, though I don't connect with this as I do with the album A Crow Looked At Me by Mount Eerie or the poem Nothing But Death by Neruda. Both are different in tone and in theme to this, though all three tackle death.

That being said with stories and other preferences aside, the repetition here is strong. The structure is strong. This poem is almost telling the dying person to put up a fight with the 'dying of the light' to stay alive. The poem wraps up in a way that's emotionally impactful to the reader one way or another.

Like Alliyah said, the pure contrast between 'do not go gentle' which is a more calm way of saying 'put up a fight' and 'rage' is strong here, and I believe that this is partially how the poem ended up wrapping up so well. I don't need any more content after this. That's the end for the poem itself though that shows the reader that it might not be the end for them or someone else close to them.

I'm glad that this is a poem I can actually wrestle with and discuss about from reading in a more recent memory. Thanks for that! Going to go ahead and tag a couple more people too that might enjoy this conversation. >:3


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Thu Jul 13, 2017 4:20 am
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Kale says...



As much as I adore the structure of this poem, its message has never resonated with me. I didn't think much of it when I first was introduced to it as a famous example of a villanelle, and I re-encountered it again many times in the context of war.

In any case, my family is filled with people who died young and violently, or after prolonged and painful illness. Only my paternal great-grandmother died of old age, and by all accounts, she did so peacefully, in her sleep.

Going gently into that good night was something that my mother looked forward to, because it would have meant that she had lived a long, fulfilling life. But she did not go gently. She went ridden with pain and regret, lingering for as long as she could because she feared her death would undo all the work she had done in keeping our family together, and she was right.

There was a point, about a week before she finally died, that I knew she wasn't going to make it, that there was no longer any hope for her to recover, and I didn't want that. I wanted her to keep fighting, to keep living, to not die while I had to watch, but over the next few days, I came to see how much pain she was in, and how the only reason she was still holding onto life was because everyone else refused to let her go, and I came to realize that holding onto her like that was so terribly, terribly cruel because she could not stop herself from dying; all she could do was fight to delay it, and prolong her suffering in the process.

So when I read this poem nowadays, all I can see is the selfishness of the narrator, commanding his father to linger on rather than let his father die in peace, and at peace.

Everyone dies, and I would rather go gently than not.
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Thu Jul 13, 2017 9:07 pm
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Aley says...



To respond in short since i dont have a lot of time to @kyllorac i can absolutely agree that this poem is selfish. I think when my mom was sick and i heard this poem it resonated with me because it was, in part, expressing a secret desire of mine, and also because if my mom did not fight she would have died.

That being said i can understand your disenchantment when you look at it as rageing being painful struggles against the reality of dying, but for me i looked at it in the abstract as a will to fight for ebery minute of cognasant life.

I do agree that going peacefully is better than painfully and asking someone dying painfully to fight for life is selfish, but i love the poem for the unspoken selfish nature.
  





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Tue Oct 17, 2017 4:41 pm
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popsicles says...



Aley wrote:To respond in short since i dont have a lot of time to @kyllorac i can absolutely agree that this poem is selfish. I think when my mom was sick and i heard this poem it resonated with me because it was, in part, expressing a secret desire of mine, and also because if my mom did not fight she would have died.

That being said i can understand your disenchantment when you look at it as rageing being painful struggles against the reality of dying, but for me i looked at it in the abstract as a will to fight for ebery minute of cognasant life.

I do agree that going peacefully is better than painfully and asking someone dying painfully to fight for life is selfish, but i love the poem for the unspoken selfish nature.

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Sun Oct 22, 2017 4:43 pm
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Radrook says...



My father raged against the dying of the light for 16 years with prostate cancer and my mother for four with Alzheimer's. So I definitely can appreciate the emotional intensity of this very famous poem. Actually, there are recordings of the poet himself on certain websites YouTube where the author personally recites it. He wrote it as he watched his father slowly die and recites it with a very emotional way.
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