love song of j alfred prufrock

Deconstructing Moody Poems: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Do Not go Gentle into That Good Nig

by Paul Thomson on Apr 7, 2010

Dylan Thomas and T.S. Eliot are probably the two moodiest poets we're forced to read during high school. The real shame of the impression this leaves is that, when read correctly, they're actually full of the life-affirming stuff that makes good poetry so endlessly readable. To prove a point, let's take a look at two of their most morose works.Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" is a villanelle (see also: ridiculously controlled poem) that urges us to resist mortality, even until our dying breath. The poem's structure has an inner tension that compliments its literal message; while the steady one-two beat mimics the onslaught of time, the harsh vowels and jarring consonants fight the poem's flow, obeying the narrator's command not to go down without a fight.The word "rage," which sums up the entire message of the poem, appears eight times across just nineteen lines - which is a form of defiance in itself, since the word is harsh and awkward to pronounce. (Just say...Read More >>