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

Dylan Thomas, at the age of 16, left school to pursue being a writer and a reporter. he died at the age of 39 on November 9, 1953.

Do not go gentle into that good night

Dylan Thomas

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.

This nineteen line poem has two rhymes that repeat throughout it, five tercets and one quatrain. The first and third lines of the first quatrain repeat throughout the poem. The second line in each tercet and in the one quatrain rhyme throughout the poem, while the first and third (and in the one quatrain, the last two lines) rhyme. There is only a rhyme scheme of aba, aba, aba, aba, aba, abaa, so only two rhymes. “Do not go gentle into that good night,” and “Rage, rage against the dying of the light,” repeat over other at the end of the lines, until the one quatrain, where both are said, it is the refrain. “Do not go gentle into that good night,” is the start of the poem. Because of this rhyme scheme, repetition, and structure of the poem, this is called a villanelle. This poem is broken up into stages where it is describing the stages of life. While analyzing the poem, the “Wise men,” “Good men,” “wild men,” “Grave men,” is talking about everyone and how all of our days will end. Each of the five tercets are a stage of life, and the one quatrain at the end is defining that everyone has to face death in the end. The way the poem is structured and frame is to emphasis the stages of life and the repetition is to show how it all comes together in the end for everyone. 

"Dancing with God" by Stephen Dunn

Stephen Dunn has written fifteen collections of poetry. He won many awards including the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

Dancing with God
by Stephen Dunn
At first the surprise
of being singled out,
the dance floor crowded
and me not looking my best,
a too-often-worn dress
and the man with me
a budding casualty
of one repetition too much.
God just touched his shoulder
and he left.
Then the confirmation
of an old guess:
God was a wild god,
into the most mindless rock,
but graceful,
looking—this excited me—
like no one I could love,
cruel mouth, eyes evocative
of promises unkept.
I never danced better, freer,
as if dancing were my way
of saying how easily
I could be with him, or apart.
When the music turned slow
God held me close
and I felt for a moment
I’d mistaken him,
that he was Death
and this the famous embrace
before the lights go out.
But God kept holding me
and I him
until the band stopped
and I stood looking at a figure
I wanted to slap
or forgive for something,
I couldn’t decide which.
He left then, no thanks,
no sign
that he’d felt anything
more than an earthly moment
with someone who could’ve been
anyone on earth.
To this day I don’t know why
I thought he was God,
though it was clear
there was no going back
to the man who brought me,
nice man
with whom I’d slept
and grown tired,
who danced wrong,
who never again
could do anything right.

The girl is at a dance with a not suitable date and her “too-often-worn dress” she believes to “not looking her best.” We may not be looking our best when God comes to us. We can be beaten down, in a tough of our life waiting for the peak to come. God comes in and saves that day or according to the poem comes in and asks her to dance. Being with God, many become freer and can find happiness with Him. Even as wild as the music was, God was still there dancing along just like God will hold on in the wild, crazy parts of someone’s life. “When the music turned slow God held me close” it’s when God holds people even when their life is slow. Even when He leaves after dancing, God still cares. Mistaking God for death, the girl felt at peace with it, like she was in heaven with God at that point. The metaphor shows that God is always around at all points in our life and He can come to us in our need to help bring us to Him. At the end of the poem, the girl cannot go back to the man she can with because he is of little relevance to her life, now that God has danced with her. This poem is like when God finds us in our low points-although he can find us in our high as well- we feel him with us, we can see that he is there and wants us. God helps us find who we are meant to be with and watch as people come and go in our lives for a reason. 

Martha Collins was born in 1940 in Omaha, NE. She is an author of poems and has published them many books including a book length poem, Blue Front.

Lies by Martha Collins

Anyone can get it wrong, laying low
when she ought to lie, but is it a lie
for her to say she laid him when we know
he wouldn’t lie still long enough to let
her do it? A good lay is not a song,
not anymore; a good lie is something
else: lyrics, lines, what if you say dear sister
when you have no sister, what if you say guns
when you saw no guns, though you know
they’re there? She laid down her arms; she lay
down, her arms by her sides. If we don’t know,
do we lie if we say? If we don’t say, do we lie
down on the job? To arms! in any case,
dear friends. If we must lie, let’s not lie around.

The author plays with the word lie, laid, lay. According to dictonary.com, lie means a false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive; an intentional untruth; a falsehood. On the other hand, lay means to put or place in a horizontal position or position of rest; set down, with laid be the past tense. The author is showing how these two words, while spoken similarly, but spelt differently, mean to completely different things. While one may not catch that the author is talking about not telling the truth and something horizontal, a few sentences with the right word choice can make it clear from the reading aloud point of view: “but is it a lie for her to say she laid him when we know he wouldn't lie still long enough to let her do it?” Contradictory to the definitions, this seems to be incorrect, although when we read it, it does. The author plays with these words, and chooses when to use which one based off the meaning or idea she wants to get across. Her word choice is confusing when looking into the definitions, but when read aloud, it sounds right. “What if you say dear sister when you have no sister, what if you say guns when you saw no guns, though you know they’re there?” this rhetorical question is defining a lie while in the next sentence-“She laid down her arms; she lay down, her arms by her sides”- is describing lay. The author is tricking us, but making sense in her own way because how she wrote it, her diction exemplifies her meaning. 

"To a Daughter Leaving Home" by Linda Pastan

Linda Pastan was raised in New York, but lived in Maryland. She won the Mademoiselle Poetry Prize her senior year in college, but decided to stop writing to raise her family. Then she picked back up her writing.

To a Daughter Leaving Home
by: Linda Pastan
When I taught you
at eight to ride
a bicycle, loping along
beside you
as you wobbled away
on two round wheels,
my own mouth rounding
in surprise when you pulled
ahead down the curved
path of the park,
I kept waiting
for the thud
of your crash as I
sprinted to catch up,
while you grew
smaller, more breakable
with distance,
pumping, pumping
for your life, screaming
with laughter,
the hair flapping
behind you like a
handkerchief waving
goodbye.

As the speaker pushes her little girl off on a bike for the first time, it shows her whole life. As we grow up, we generally leave our families and move away, having our own lives. Throughout our school years- preschool, kindergarten, elementary school, junior high, high school- we are with our parents, unless other circumstances, but once we go to college, many students move away. This short poem expresses a lifetime of the parent-daughter relationship. As the setting being outside because the girl is learning to ride a bike, it is the parent’s perspective of how she takes on her life. Her life starts as she “wobbled away” soon to be growing “smaller, more breakable with distance.” The parents chase after the girl as she grows and is filled with life “screaming with laughter.” Parents often hold onto the children much longer than children hold to parents. The first taste of freedom children taste, they take it all. The sequence of the daughter’s life in the short poem shows how short life seems to be to a parent when their child grows up. The “hair flapping behind you like a handkerchief waving goodbye” is the daughter’s way of saying goodbye. It is never a real goodbye, but the parents know what it is. This poem can be translated to most parents’ life as they see their children going off; they get smaller in the distance as the parents sprint after them, never quite catching back up. 

"Paper Matches" by Paulette Jiles

Paulette Jiles was born in Salem, Missouri on April 4, 1943. She won the Governor General's Award for English-language poetry.

“Paper Matches"

My aunts washed dishes while the uncles
squirted each other on the lawn with
garden hoses. Why are we in here,
I said, and they are out there?
That’s the way it is,
said Aunt Hetty, the shriveled-up one.
I have the rages that small animals have,
being small, being animal.
Written on me was a message,
“At Your Service,”
like a book of paper matches.
One by one we were taken out
and struck.
We come bearing supper,
our heads on fire.

This poem's speaker can be defined as any women, mostly younger. Mainly this poem is from the view point of a young girl, who feels as that it is unfair that her "aunts washed dishes while the uncles squirted each other." It is the girl’s first step to realizing that women are seen as housewives, not to have fun, and constantly "At Your Service." A while back, women were only housewives; they did not have jobs except to take care of the children, the house, and the husband. The speaker asks “Why are we in here,…and they are out there?” asking why are we doing chores, while they are having fun? But the aunt just answers because “that’s the way it is,” it is the way it always has been. The women are meant to do the chores; the women clean the house, make sure warm, good food is on the table when the husband comes home, the children have their homework done, and then after dinner the dishes are washed and dried. Now, more women are gaining jobs, and there are even dads that stay home. Feminism is on the rise because many women want to turn away from the housewives idea of women to have equal rights for women and men. The younger girl is showing that this revelation comes across for all women at some point. They realized what society expects of them, where they want to be the cook, the maid, the housewife or not.

"Driving Glove" by Claudia Emerson

Claudia Emerson was born January 13, 1957. She has honors including Pulitzer Prize nominations and won it for Late Wife (2005).

Driving Glove
by Claudia Emerson
I was unloading groceries from the trunk
of what had been her car, when the glove floated
up from underneath the shifting junk-
a crippled umbrella, the jack, ragged
maps. I knew it was not one of yours,
this more delicate, soft, made from hide
of a kid or lamb.It still remembered
her hand, the creases where her fingers


had bent to hold the wheel, the turn
of her palm, smaller than mine. There was
nothing else to do but return it -
let it drift, sink, slow as a leaf through water
to rest on the bottom where I have not
forgotten it remains - persistent in its loss."

This short quaint poem of two stanzas changes the tone from a once distance memory about a lady to a full flood of the memory where as the speaker must take a moment to catch her breath. While unpacking groceries from the car, a driving glove comes up from "the shifting junk." It is at a point where the speaker is trying to remember back to a time when a woman was still alive. It is not "one of yours, thus more delicate, soft, made from the hide of a kid or lamb,” may refer to it that it is not her father’s glove, but maybe her mother’s. The break after the speaker describes the woman's hand shifts the tone. This drop off in the middle of the sentence suggests that the speaker has had the full memory of a tragedy that had happened, but is not described. The speaker needs to take a breath. A new heart reaching memory floods in and the tone shifts from a calm, melancholy tone into an emotional, mournful whirl. The mournful speaker does not want the memory to be lost. It is placed back where it is found, "return it-let it drift, sink, slow as a leaf through water to rest on the bottom." This memory will not be forgotten, even as the inference of the speaker leaving the car and glove behind to leave the woman's touch where it is remembered most.

"Constantly Risking Absurdity" by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Ferlinghetti was born March 24, 1919. He lived in New York.

Constantly Risking Absurdity (#15)

BY LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI

Constantly risking absurdity

                                             and death

            whenever he performs

                                        above the heads

                                                            of his audience

   the poet like an acrobat

                                 climbs on rime

                                          to a high wire of his own making

and balancing on eyebeams

                                     above a sea of faces

             paces his way

                               to the other side of day

    performing entrechats

                               and sleight-of-foot tricks

and other high theatrics

                               and all without mistaking

                     any thing

                               for what it may not be

       For he's the super realist

                                     who must perforce perceive

                   taut truth

                                 before the taking of each stance or step

in his supposed advance

                                  toward that still higher perch

where Beauty stands and waits

                                     with gravity

                                                to start her death-defying leap

      And he

             a little charleychaplin man

                                           who may or may not catch

               her fair eternal form

                                     spreadeagled in the empty air

                  of existence

 If a line is drawn right down the middle of this poem, it would look as if a balancing act was going on. Balancing between the riskiness of a poem; and not taking enough chances to where it falls flat, Ferlinghetti develops a poem discussing the way a poem is like an acrobatic act. Authors of poems have to decide when to take risks (“to start her death-defying leap”) and when not to. This poem describes how they must balance it out otherwise they “may or may not catch,” referring to the audience. Imagery is created where the audience can imagine a person up on a tight rope with their arms spread out far, stepping carefully one foot in front of each other. Parallelism creates an effect that the author is in a tight situation and risking and may fall and may succeed by the repetition the word “and.” The “super realist” is upon the tight rope, walking a thin line about to fall and if he/she makes it across the whole rope, they succeed. The audience sees the extended arms of the acrobat, and knows if one slips lower than the rest, it means that they will fall. Although the audience may not understand the poem (“spreadeagled in the empty air of existence”), the point for the authors is to take risks, but not to the point of absurdity. Every time authors write poems they risk “absurdity and death” where the audience is not such an easy crowd to please.