#62: Two Poems on Loss - Dylan Thomas and Elizabeth Bishop

The Villanelle Form

These two poems are so good they deserve their own space. But the thought of pairing them as representations of the same poetic form is too alluring to pass up. The form is called villanelle from the Latin word ‘villanus’, meaning farmhand because it relates originally to a pastoral subject.

It is composed as follows: five stanzas of three lines (tercets) and a sixth of four lines (quatrain), and a complicated refrain and rhyming pattern. The refrain is a repeat of line 1 of stanza one at line 3 of stanzas two and four, and at line 3 of stanza six; and line 3 of stanza one at line 3 of stanzas three and five, and at line 4 of stanza six. The rhyme is between lines 1 and 3 of each tercet, and likewise lines 1, 3 and 4 of the quatrain, and line 2 of each stanza, and line 2 of the quatrain.

I started to laugh as I reached half-way in that paragraph. Writers are supposed not to start an article with pedantic stuff like that…and then it just got worse! In the end I could not even edit it; it is so bad, it just has to stay! The point is the straitjacket with which the form constrains the poet. How much harder must it be to compose a poem under such a tight format?

‘Do not go gentle’ may be the most evocative poem of Dylan Thomas (1914-1953), demanding as it does a fight, a ‘rage’ against a too easy passage into death. Does it refer to his father directly? Probably not as Thomas wrote this poem in 1947 and his father only died in December 1952. Yet it strikes home as its popularity for readings at funerals can attest. Many experiences of a father’s death are logged; my own was superficially expressionless, someone stopped breathing. It was drawn out then abrupt, yet it would have been impossible at any time to say words like this (I did not begin to think of it) as the drama was too pointed, too strenuous for anything more than the steadiest meditation of heart and mind.

Here is a link to the poet reading his poem:

It is a mesmerizing performance of great power.

Perhaps Thomas had in his mind a period some time before the death-bed itself. Then his poem makes sense. While you can, fight hard, do not give in, concede nothing, visualize all good and beautiful things. And when should this period start exactly? A month before death? Surely further before, say two years? Then why not a decade? Why not a whole lifetime – raging against death all my life, raving against a darkening light, it is not a good night since such a thing does not exist.

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 grieve 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.

And one of the finest poems of Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979), One Art. A real favourite this! At the risk of making a complete fool of myself – rather because I happened to notice – I must point out that Elizabeth does not adhere to the exact villanelle form as closely as does Dylan Thomas. Line 3 of the first tercet is not repeated exactly as line 3 of the third and fifth tercets as it should. You may accuse me of pedantry: at what point does attention to form unjustifiably overshadow attention to meaning? I plead guilty; I have passed that point. And shame on me!

               One Art

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant

to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.

I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident

the art of losing’s not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Now, to make amends for my lack of attention to content.

The speaker tries to persuade herself that all losses are equal, a level playing-field: keys, time, names, destinations, her mother’s watch, loved homes, cities, a continent, all these are missed but that loss is not a disaster. ‘Even losing you’…and we instinctively know, despite her protestation to the contrary,  she is lying, fooling herself, ‘the joking voice, a gesture I love’, hello? And then the keystone, the parenthesis, perhaps one of the most powerful ever written because it gives her away entirely.

(Write it!) The italicized Write, the exclamation mark; and we realize that she has had to force herself to write the whole poem, and that there is no living hope in hell that she can equate the loss of those small things, even the big memories, even a continent, with the loss of her love, no matter how hard she tries. The loss does look like a disaster, and oh my word it is.

What did I say about the bravery of poets? American journalists pick over the history of Elizabeth’s life, noting her lovers, one dying at her own hand, another one separated. They post their comments, not really ever seeing inside, never praising her courage in making herself so vulnerable in the first place. No comment for how she must have felt at the disaster of the loss, then to discuss that disaster in such a ‘hidden in open sight’ manner, and then to publish a poem! I praise her courage!

But this is what poets do – incise deep into themselves to access a pain and a loneliness for the sake of humanity, for the sake of letting us all know that these states happen, can be endured, can even be the source of an exquisite play on words. All for the purpose of compassion.