Running Head: THE THIEF 1

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1 Running Head: THE THIEF 1 The Thief in the Night and the Response of Two Poets Deborah Gilmore ENG125: Introduction to Literature Instructor Miranda Saake February 20, 2012

2 THE THIEF 2 The Thief in the Night and the Response of Two Poets Of poets, you could not find two people more dissimilar than Thomas Dylan and Emily Dickinson. Throughout his life Dylan Thomas was reckless, flamboyant, irreverent, innocent, bawdy, and bibulous (Daiches, 1960). Emily Dickinson, on the other hand, was known as The Myth, characterized by her reclusive nature (Murphy, 1975). However, the subject poems of this paper, Because I Could Not Stop for Death by Dickinson, and Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night by Thomas, both lyrical in style, find a like theme in death. Not surprisingly, each poet takes a different approach to death. The purpose of this paper is to compare these two poems for their similitude, to contrast their disparities, and to manifest the emotions from which each poem is composed, resulting in the discovery of the emotions they impart to readers. Dylan Thomas According to Ralph Maud, author of Selected Letters of Dylan Thomas, Thomas was not concerned with hiding any truths, rather with a commitment to revealing things hidden too long (O Hara, 1969). Death, a subject most people attempt to avoid, the poet deliberately brings from shadow into stark day light. Thomas poems surge with texture and imagery. For example, the first and second lines in the fourth stanza, (1) Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, and (2) And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way leaves the reader with no doubt the primitive picture painted by Thomas s words (Thomas, 1952). Indeed, the poet s villanelle bursts with emotions: anger, sadness, love, and heartfelt sincerity. Thomas s typical poems use... identifiable situations, and... persuasive voices (O Hara, 1969). Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night clearly conveys to readers; that Thomas himself, is desperately

3 THE THIEF 3 imploring his father not to succumb to death, rather to rage against the dying of the light (Thomas, 1952). Being the controversial man that he was, Dylan Thomas threw conservative verse to the wind, stating, I let, perhaps, an image be 'made' emotionally in me and then apply to it what intellectual & [sic] critical forces I possess (Poets.org. Dylan, ). Thomas lyrics are profound with erupting emotion, finding more commonality with romantic verse (Poets. Org. Dylan, ). By punctuating the line, Rage, rage against the dying of the light with a comma, the rhythm is broken; both words must be equally emphasized, revealing the son s anger and desperation, and imbuing readers with the poet s agony. He is advocating active resistance to death immediately before death, not sad mourning after it (Westphal, 1994). Containing four lines instead of the following five line stanzas, the first stanza opens a door, inviting the reader to hear the poet s cry of desperation to his dying father. According to Russell Astley (1969), in Stations of the Breath: End Rhyme in the Verse of Dylan Thomas, Thomas early poems contained a unique method, using hard consonants to emphasize his feelings. As his poems developed more maturity, Thomas became cognizant of the potentials of this system of consonant coordination unique to his poetry. The first line of the subject poem, deployed with dental stops, is difficult in its recitation. However, this difficulty pronounces the son s anguish at his father s certain death (Reese, 1966). Likewise, Thomas scattering of ds throughout his poem momentarily interrupts the flow of words, consistently and constantly reminding his readers of his agitated state. Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night expresses Dylan Thomas anger and anguish, not so much by his verse as by his use of verbs. The verbs he employs, rage, rave, burn, dying, crying, caught, and blaze, gather the heft of Thomas overwhelming emotions and hurls them into the reader s face. The last stanza

4 THE THIEF 4 completes Thomas poem of grief for his father and soundly closes the door through which the reader was invited to witness Thomas dolor. The verse of Dylan Thomas just about exhausts the possibilities of end rhyme in English (Astley. 1969). Thomas abundant use of internal rhyme, near-rhyme, assonance, falling, and feminine endings results in a sensation of vitality and energy (Horan, 1945). All through this poem we find that Thomas utilizes the long a sound, like rage, sang, late, and blaze, and internal rhyme, like rave, and wave, age and rage. This assonance along with alliteration, such as sang the sun and learn too late, rides readers emotions up in victory and down in mourning. Viewing the poem as a whole, the rhyming scheme is obvious; the first and third lines of each stanza with the end rhyme -ight, and the second and fourth lines with the end rhyme -ay. The repetition of these words and sounds grips and carries readers with the poet s resolute passion. The rhyming scheme of Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night is called a villanelle. A villanelle is [a] 19-line poem of fixed form consisting of five tercets and a final quatrain on two rhymes, with the first and third lines of the first tercet repeated alternately as a refrain closing the succeeding stanzas and joined as the final couplet of the quatrain (The Free, 2012). In Russell Astley s (1969) opinion, Do not go gentle into that good night (1951) rates as one of the finest villanelles in the language. Emily Dickinson In direct contrast to Dylan Thomas, Emily Dickinson s renowned reclusive nature and the scarcity of facts regarding her general life, bestowed upon her death the label The Myth (Murphy, 1975). Dickinson s poems, though, unveil her loneliness, need, inspiration, and perhaps, happiness. Brought up in a Puritan New England town, her environment promoted a

5 THE THIEF 5 Calvinist, orthodox, and conservative Christian life, an immediate juxtaposition to Thomas tempestuous life. Although once interpreted as religious, bland, and sentimental, more recently, students of Dickinson acknowledge her strangeness and versatility bringing her more into focus with Thomas (Poets.org. Emily, ). Many of her poems, akin to Dylan Thomas, speak of death. As in Thomas s Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night, Dickinson, herself, articulates her poem, Because I Could Not Stop for Death. Additionally, both poems reveal a desire to avoid death. Dickinson, like Dylan, undermined conventional poetic style, employing confrontational and startling imagery (Poets.org, ). However, the similarity stops there. Unlike Thomas s despairing rage against death, Dickinson finds peace in death. The poem establishes a plot of sorts and engages readers on a journey, creating a subtle sense of expectation, the anticipation of closure (Anderson, 1984). Emily Dickinson s poem calmly reflects her surprise that death, personified and disguised as a courteous gentleman, subtly bore her away from life. Death sits Dickinson in a carriage and takes her on a tour of ordinary life, as if giving her a chance to say goodbye. However, reading the last verse, we understand, she apparently rode into Eternity unaware of this fleeting opportunity. Personification of immaterial and inanimate objects occurs several times during our journey with the poem s narrator. In addition to death s embodiment, Dickinson creates gazing grain in the third stanza and in the fourth stanza she refers to the sun as He. Because I Could Not Stop for Death combines Dickinson s typical poetic methods. Readers readily understand Emily Dickinson s poetry through her unusual punctuation, frequently the dash, and her utilization of enjambment. We find a qualified example reading the final stanza:

6 THE THIEF 6 Since then tis Centuries and yet Feels shorter than the Day I first surmised the Horses' Heads Were toward Eternity Emily Dickinson (nd). Dickinson s thoughtful and curious hesitancy illustrated with the dashes needs no interpretation. Also apparent in this final verse is the poet s unusual tempo, slow in the first line by reason of the dashes, then faster to the end by Dickinson s use of enjambment. Isaac Watts, known as the architect of the modern English hymn, surely influenced Emily Dickinson. The meter Isaac originated is known as hymn meter today (Poets.org. Issac, ). Hymn meter counts syllables instead of feet as practiced in traditional meter (Poets.org. Poets, ). Rejecting iambic pentameter, the dominant meter used for hundreds of year, hymn meter--and the emotionally spiritual content of Watts' biblical adaptations [became] the foundation of [Dickinson s] poetic. Employing hymn meter satisfied Emily Dickinson s revolutionary nature of... expression and proved her [a] renegade in American literature (Poets.org. Issac, ). While reading the subject poem, if readers are not careful, the fourth verse seems out of step with its three previous fellows. Indeed, the tempo variant effectively slows our reading. The first three and the last three stanzas share like patterns of syllables, the first and third lines each holding eight syllables, then the second and fourth lines containing six each. However, the fourth stanza changes tempo; its first and fourth lines alike with six syllables and the second and third lines with eight syllables. This noticeable variation enables us to recognize the fourth verse as a turning point in the poem s plot. Following Dickinson from the last line in the third verse,

7 THE THIEF 7 We passed the Setting Sun, to the fourth verse, Or rather He passed us -, exemplifies the narrator s dawning recognition that life, like the sun, seems to be passing by, instead of her passing through the previously noted everyday occurrences. Subsequently, she feels cold, as spoken in the second line, The Dews drew quivering and chill -, but rationalizes the cause is her light clothing. Authorities in poetry and poetry s students esteem Emily Dickinson as one of the ambassadors of American poetics. Dickinson s style contrasts the earthly with the heavenly, the artificial with the natural, providing ethereal life and common, everyday life with new names and new locations in human experience (Anderson, (1984). The conclusion of Because I Could Not Stop for Death reveals the reason for the serenity with which Dickinson renders her poem. She found herself in the final destination defined by her Christian upbringing, heaven. True to style, Dickinson pens Eternity; as a place, not a transcendental conception. Such poetic contrasts set Dickinson apart from other poets of her time. To summarize, we found that Dickinson s and Thomas poems contrast in their rhyming schemes. Thomas poem, akin to romanticism, is written as a tragic and upheaving villanelle. Dickinson s lyrics ripple from line to line, momentarily interrupted as a small brook bubbling over pebbles. However, both poems elicited our emotions from a to-and-fro passion in Thomas Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night, to curious surprise and hope in Dickinson s Because I Could Not Stop for Death. Once one reads Dylan Thomas poem, one cannot forget his passion. As for Emily Dickinson, her lyrics are unmistakable and unlikely to be confused with the work of any other poet (Anderson, 1984). After comparing these two poems for their similitude, contrasting their disparities, and manifesting the emotions from which each poem is composed, the emotions they impart to

8 THE THIEF 8 readers cannot be negated. One cannot deny our empathy and heartbreak that bears upon us when reading a son s entreaty to his dying father to live. As for Dickinson, we must feel curious during our journey with her, and surprise and hope at our destination, because Dickinson requires that we tune our ear to her peculiarity, and look, as she did, into the "look of death" (Poets.org. Poets, ). We also discovered that Dylan Thomas and Emily Dickinson, in their own lifetimes, were both revolutionaries, bards bent to the beat of their own drums. Both poets bore no fear of society s inhibitions toward particular subject matter, such as death. In each lyric poem, Thomas and Dickinson, alike, are the narrators. Although Thomas poem surges with emotion and Dickinson s verse traverses a calm path to peaceful Eternity, both writers creations are replete with vivid imagery. Their approaches differ. Thomas, at a loss for his father s imminent departure, seeing death as the final darkness, rails against death and implores his father to vindicate himself from death. Dickinson, on the other hand, passively admits her surprise that death has taken her. She also shares with her readers that she is headed for Eternity, a destination most individuals hope to gain.

9 THE THIEF 9 References Anderson, D. (Jun ) Presence and Place in Emily Dickinson's Poetry. The New England Quarterly. Vol. 57, No. 2. pp Retrieved from: Astley, R. (Oct 1969.) Stations of the breath: end rhyme in the verse of Dylan Thomas. PMLA. Vol. 84. No. 6. pp Retrieved from: : Dickinson, E. (nd.) Because I Could Not Stop for Death. Retrieved from: Horan, R. (1945.) In defense of Dylan Thomas. Published by The Kenyon Review. Vol. 7, No. 2. pp Retrieved from: Murphy, F. (Jun ) Review. The Life of Emily Dickinson by Richard B. Sewall. The New England Quarterly. Vol. 48. No. 2. pp Retrieved from: O Hara, J. D. (1969.) Review. Dylan Thomas' Notebooks and Letters. Ralph Maud: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas by Dylan Thomas. Published by: The Massachusetts Review, Inc. Vol. 10, No. 2. pp Retrieved from: Poets.org. ( ) Dylan Thomas. Retrieved from:

10 THE THIEF 10 References Poets.org. ( ) Emily Dickinson. Retrieved from: Poets.org. ( ) Isaac Watts and Emily Dickinson: inherited meter. Retrieved from: Poets.org. ( ) Poets.org guide to Emily Dickinson s Collected Poems. Retrieved from: Reese, Jack. (1966.) Sound and Sense: The Teaching of Prosody. College English. Vol. 27. No. 5. pp Retrieved from: The Free Dictionary. (2012.) Copyright by Farlex, Inc. Retrieved from Thomas, D. (1951.) Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night. Retrieved from: Westphal, J. ( 1994.) Thomas s Do not Go Gentle into that Good Night. Published by The Explicator. Vol. 52, Iss. 2; pg Retrieved from: Fmt=3.

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