College- Sestina

COLLEGE
They say high school are the greatest years of your life.
Well, I beg to differ.
The next four years have so much to offer,
I like to call the next four years college.
Don't get me wrong, high school was fun,
but there is so much more to come.

I enjoy my senior year, but I cant wait for graduation to come.
I am ready to move on with the rest of my life,
I just want to have fun.
Although high school and college greatly differ,
I feel as if I am prepared for college.
I cant wait for the opportunities it has to offer.

I know my future has so much to offer.
Spring is here, summer is to come
Once it is summer, next is college.
I know it will be the time of my life.
Although our opinions may differ,
I know it will be fun.

All of the new friends I will gain will be fun.
College will have new experiences to offer.
Our experiences may differ,
but you should be excited for what's to come.
You can reinvent yourself and have a new life,
all while in college .

Are you excited for college?
The rest of the year will be fun.
But think about next year, your new life.
Its an offer
you cant resist, and is soon to come.
Do our opinions differ?

Our opinions may differ.
But let me tell you, your next four years will most likely be spent at college.
Don't dread what's to come,
enjoy it and have some fun.
Don't dread what it has to offer,
have the time of your life.

So now I saw goodbye, as I move on with the rest of my life
There is so much more to come, college has so much more to offer.
everyone's opinions differ, but we all know it will be fun.

Villanelles- Do not go gentle into that good night

Out of these three poems, Do not go gently into that good night seems to fit the profile of a Villanelle the best. The poem follows the villanelle structure just as it is explained: Two lines that are both repeated four times each ("Rage, rage against the dying of the light" and "Do not go gentle into that good night"), five stanzas of three lines followed by a quatrain, and an ABA rhyme scheme. This poem exemplifies these aspects of the villanelle perfect and does not stray from the basic structures like the other two poems slightly do. In this poem, Dylan Thomas describes four types of men and how they react when they come to the realization that it is their time to die. "Wise men" know that their time has come but wish they had caused more controversy or spread their wisdom more during life. The "good men" wish they could do more good deeds. The "wild men" reflect on how they might have lived life too fast and have come to that realization too late. "Grave men", though they are near death, are still able to see joy in life and thus want to go on living. In the quatrain at the end of the poem, Thomas addresses his father and tells him "Do not go gentle into that good night; Rage, rage against the dying of the light". Thomas is almost selfishly asking his father to hold onto life so that he will not lose him. As the excerpt said that villanelles traditionally deal with some sort of loss, this villanelle deals with the ordeal of death in general,and then, more specifically, the death of Thomas' father.

This picture makes me think of the use of "light" and "night" in the poem to represent life and death. A candle light slowly fading in the night as the wick burns out seems to represent going gently into the night, just what the author is saying to avoid.

Villanelle

After reading all three of the poems presented, I found that "Do not go gentle into that good night" by Dylan Thomas best meets the requirements of a villanelle. Although in a close second "The Waking" by Theodore Roethke and "One Art" Elizabeth Bishop both meet some of the requirements, they are missing a few repeating lines and "Do not go gentle into that good night" meets almost, if not all, of them. He adds a personal note at the end of the poem, common in villanelles, by saying "And you, my father, there on that 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 could make us think maybe the poem is about his father, which adds a sentimental aspect to the poem and also helps prove the message. By reading the title of the poem, you would simply think it was about night time. But, as you read deeper into the poem, you find that it is about death. And that one should fight death as long as possible. (ie "do not go gentle into that good night (death)"). Like in the text given about villanelles, villanelles rarely tell a story, but they just repeat something over and over. This poem, "Do not go gentle into that good night" doesn't necessarily tell a story, but it repeats the message over and over in each stanza, the message being don't die easily basically. This message is also shown with the repetition of the phrases "do not go gentle into that good night" and "Rage, rage against the dying of the light." This is also a common thing in villanelles, making this poem meet more of the requirements than the other two poems.
Dylan Thomas

The Waking Villanelle

Theodore Roethke's complex and abstract poem uses the villanelle form as he considers his life in a broader context than most consider. In this poem Roethke ponders knowledge in relation to sensation. "We think by feeling." Throughout the poem he asks more questions than he answers, and takes us into a journey into his head. The Waking seems like a meditative self-discovering poem that urgers readers to deeply reflect. The repetition of "I wake to sleep" seems to signify the cycle of life that humans find themselves in. Also mentioned in this poem is the man's death. It seems that while all these abstract thoughts are floating through the air, there are always the certaintys in life. The events of sleeping and dying seem to answer more questions for the author. His dreams must reveal certain things that he can not put into words.

Villanelles

After reading all three poems, I realized that Dylan Thomas' "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" is the only one that fulfills all the requirements of a villanelle. Theodore Roethke's "The Waking" and Elizabeth Bishop's "One Art" are close, but both are missing a couple of the repeated lines. Not only is his poem a perfect villanelle, but also Thomas' form helps communicate his message that old men should resist dying and not go out without a fight. The repetition of "Do not go gentle into that good night" and "Rage, rage against the dying of the light" emphasize that you must rage against the dying of the light (life) and not go gently (easily) into that good night (death). The villanelle style emphasizes this while also juxtaposing the different kinds of men. Although it is very vague, "Wise men," "Good men," "Wild men," and "Grave men" are meant to sum up all men and say that nobody should succumb to death. No matter what they have done in their lives, they should resist dying as long as they can. The villanelle style also highlights a personal aspect of the poem; the last stanza is a quatrain and is different than the other five stanzas. It is here where Thomas says, "And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray" (16-17). It ends the poem with a powerful, emotional appeal that his own father is confronting death. Then the two lines are repeated and gives us a powerful ending. I found the impact of this to be much more moving than the other two poems. I liked this poem a lot because it is rather straightforward; it is easy to catch the day/night life/death comparison and the rest of the poem is simple. The villanelle style makes the poem read like a song and the longer stanza at the end sums it up. 

(http://livebyquotes.com/2012/do-not-go-gentle-into-that-good-night-rage-rage-against-the-dying-of-the-light-dylan-thomas/)

Here is a picture with the quote on a picture of soldiers. It made me realize that this does not only have to do with old people on their death beds, but everyone who puts their lives at risk every day. 

Villanelle - One Art

A villanelle is a nineteen-line poetic form consisting of five tercets followed by a quatrain. There are two refrains and two repeating rhymes, with the first and third line of the first tercet repeated alternately until the last stanza, which includes both repeated lines. The purpose of the villanelle format is to mimic a train of thought or a thought process. While the other two peoples, in my opinion, did a better job using the villanelle formation it's classical sense, One Art succeeded in being the best because the villanelle format best furthered its purpose in detailing to the reader the idea and the thought of losing something or someone. 

More over, this poem is much less of a narrative than the others. Seemingly random pieces are linked to the central theme or loss which mimics perfectly the jumpiness of a human's train of thought. Therefor, I believe that One Art does a better job in tailoring the villanelle format/style to further the central theme even if the other two poems adhere better to the classical, strict villanelle.

This is a photograph taken by an artist commissioned to interpret Elizabeth Bishop's poems. The one shown is specifically for One Art.

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYoTWeQ6uBz97510lRKlt6mpAeqD_1LtOfpX5wwTT3N2C03c0TJDWkG8JsDL_CZ_IkvzWPcQHC8AuzORpeXG9jyjwQzp78sM4LjfuW4WSeY2y7ALJwYqJdUwhO0dovows-sMK-qipsW7U/s1600/walker.jpg

One Art

Elizabeth Bishop

At first glance Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night seemed, to me, the most traditional use of the villanelle form. Because of that I considered it the best. However, One Art by Elizabeth Bishop was the most powerful to me, and at second glance, I find that it might make better use of the villanelle form than the other two more traditional poems. Both Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night, and The Walking are incredibly vague. The former refers to “wise men,” “good men,” “wild men,” and “grave men” and manages to never reveal anything about any of them, and even less about the father. The Walking seems to be a poem about a journey, yet it almost journeys in circles. Each of these poems contain components of the modern villanelle, however I find, that One Art contains, and makes better use of, more components. Mark Strand writes that the villanelle “…refuses to tell a story. It circles around and around, refusing to go forward in any kind of linear development, and so suggesting at the deepest level, powerful recurrences of mood and emotion and memory.” One Art does this better than either of the other poems. It hints at stories, rather than avoids them and has an end to the journey, albeit no linear development, unlike the walking.

While the other poems may adhere to the form more closely than One Art, it manages better than any of them to use the form to convey it’s meaning.