Structured Poems Such as William

¶ … structured poems such as William Wordsworth's 'The World is Too Much with Us,' or Dylan Thomas' 'Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night,' do not adequately address the concept of ambivalence."

~ Nu Ance

One of the most haunting poems ever written, one that it often read at funerals and memorial services, is Dylan Thomas' "Do not go gentle into that good night." Thomas was an alcoholic, a tormented man who created great poetry. He seems like the type of maniac, creative, and expressive genius spoken of at length in John Brigg's book Fire in the Crucible. "The victims of manic depression" and other mental illnesses have often been "immensely creative and productive" (Briggs 238). One of the themes of Briggs' book is that great artistic gifts often arise in the hearts of artists who are lacking in other sphere of their lives: in Dylan's case, the poet lacked restraint in his expressions of both grief and joy.

Thomas' most famous poem is a villanelle, a highly structured form of poetry based upon an old French form. The villanelle "is a nineteen-line poem with two repeating rhymes and two refrains. The form is made up of five tercets followed by a quatrain" ("Poetic form: Villanelle," 2010). Although the use of two repeating rhymes may seem constraining, the forceful repetition of these words can create a sense of power that a free-form poem that is merely a gush of emotion might lack. This is what critics such as Nu Ance do not understand when Ance claims that Dylan Thomas' "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night," does not adequately address the concept of ambivalence. It is also important to point out to critics like Ance that many free verse poems are constructed of cliches, and that quite often ambivalence is rendered by saying the same thing -- only in a slightly different way, again and again. After all, even in speech, the simple word 'yes' can mean an affirmative, a maybe, or even a rejection, depending on its context and delivery.

In fact, Thomas' poem, because of its repetition and carefully crafted form, allows for ambivalence in a way many free verse poems do not. If the poet was not deeply ambivalent, he would not need to repeat to his father to "rage against the dying of the light." Rather than endlessly musing upon his father's death, like a drumbeat Thomas simply repeats that his father must not "go gentle into that good night." With every tercet, the repeated lines take on a different nuance. Reading the poem is like hearing a favorite song sung in a different way, again and again -- every time, a different shade of meaning is brought forth in the refrain of the poem. It is all too easy for a free verse poem to say the same thing in different ways: Thomas uses the same words again and again to convey different shades of emotion: good men, wild men, grave men, all for different reasons, he states, have not borne the inevitability of death with meekness.

The reader comes to understand that repeated words are a paradox -- Thomas tells his father, begs his father, to do what is futile -- to resist death. But Thomas is so persuasive in doing so, the reader cannot help but support the poet in his quest, although why Thomas is so determined to hate the darkness of the afterlife remains a mystery, perhaps even to the poet himself.