Dylan Thomas’ father had been a robust, militant man most of his life, and when in his eighties, he became blind and weak, his son was disturbed seeing his father become “soft” or “gentle.” In this poem, Thomas is rousing his father to continue being the fierce man he had previously been.

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.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

The major task of mourning the death of a loved one is acceptance. That is, accepting the reality that the loved one is no longer with you and accepting the multiplicity of changes that are taking place in your life due to the loss. Resisting inevitable change only leads to more pain.

There remains some controversy about how to best help people survive the loss of a loved one. While many forms of support are used and do help certain individuals, little scientific research has shown clear benefits for any particular approach.

people with depression either may not recognize that they have a treatable disorder or may be discouraged from seeking or staying on treatment due to feelings of shame and stigma. Too often, untreated or inadequately treated depression is associated with suicide.

Alcohol and depression do not mix well, however. Alcohol itself is a depressant and can exacerbate existing cases of depression. On the other hand, many alcoholics drink to “self-medicate” in order to cope with things like depression.

Dylan Thomas died in the United States on a tour on November 9, 1953. His death resulted much from his alcoholism

This Is Just to Parody

I opened the
icebox
this morning
to have plums

and to
enjoy their cold and
such sweet
juiciness

Instead I
found a note from you
so fake
and so cold

Exploding Dreams?

In Langston Hughes’s poem “Harlem” he begins by asking “what happens to a dream deferred?” Hughes starts the poem off with a question. As we read through the poem we notice that the majority of the poem is questions, all of which are rhetorical except the first one. The reason the first question is not rhetorical is because Hughes wants the reader to ask that question throughout the reading of the poem. The first question also serves the purpose of giving the reader context to what the following questions are referring to.

Hughes continues the poem with asking a series of four questions broken off in their own stanza. He puts these questions in their own stanza because they are all rhetorical questions asking similar things. The questions follow the order of, “Does it dry …. Like a raisin?... Fester like a sore?... Stink like rotten meat?... Crust and sugar over like a syrupy sweet?” With the exception of the last of the four questions, the order of the questions mimics situations in which something is gone for good. A dream that dries like a raisin in the sun in still there regardless of the fact shriveled and its appeal is gone. A dream like a festering sore is something very repulsive, a dream one wouldn’t want to touch, but with time a sore heals. Rotten meat, on the other hand, infers a dream that has gone completely bad and should probably be thrown away, but it still does exist no matter how disgusting it is. This progression also mimics a progression of time, a raisin dries quicker than a sore takes to fester, and a festering sore will cease before meat goes bad. Hughes organizes these three questions in this manner specifically to show the longer a dream exists, the more repulsive the dream becomes. Hughes finishes the stanza with the sugar question. Hughes uses this question to show that some people believe that the longer a dream exists, the more appealing it gets.
Hughes finishes the poem with one last question. This question is isolated in its own stanza and is also italicized. The question asks “…or does [the dream] explode?” Referring back to the progression above where the longer a dream exists the more gone it becomes, Hughes presents this question last because, in his opinion, dreams that exists for too long are irretrievable.

Directly before this question Hughes presents his only non-question in the poem. This immediate switch from statement to italicized question tells the reader that the last question plays the most importance in the poem. Furthermore Hughes is telling the reader that this rhetorical question is his own conclusion upon what actually happens to dreams deferred. And thus the reader can believe that Hughes’s opinion on dreams that remain unattained will be completely obliterated and destroyed.

For this blog post I will be writing about the image of the red wheelbarrow that William Carol Williams presents in his poem The Red Wheelbarrow.
The wheel barrow in Williams’s poem is pretty vividly described. He tells us that it is both red and glazed with rainwater. Even though he only uses eight words to describe it we can picture it pretty well in our head. We see a wheel barrow, obviously red, but that is glistening slightly in the sun from the little bit of rain water that is on it. We can also see that because the wheel barrow is “glazed” with rain water that this image isn’t something that would last a long time. In fact, we would expect the water to dry pretty quickly and the glistening disappearing with it. This is the literal interpretation of the red wheel barrow, but we can also take the wheel barrow to be a metaphor for something else.
If we perceive the wheel barrow to be a metaphor for something the possibilities of what this wheel barrow is increases exponentially. One perception of the wheel barrow is that it represents the labor of the nation of the whole. I state this for the following reasons. First, a wheel barrow is something that is used for labor, so literally it is a labor machine. Second, Williams writes that “so much depends upon a red wheel barrow.” When he says “so much” he really means everything because if the wheel barrow is the labor of the nation because if labor would cease, so would life as we know it. Without labor there would be no one harvesting the food that we eat, no one cleaning the water we drink, and no one protecting the things we hold most dear.


In addition to this post I am adding this link to a picture of a red wheelbarrow I seem fitting for the post. The wheelbarrow may not be glazed with rain water, but it is "glazed" with the things that it is doing labor for. In this picture the wheelbarrow is also next to the white chickens while it is conducting labor, which is its metaphorical meaning in the poem.

http://cakeandcommerce.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451b19169e201156e3f10cd970c-800wi

Dickinson's Death

In Emily Dickinson's poem "If I Should Die," Dickinson writes that there is no true difference between life and death because the world does not stop for you when you die.

IF I SHOULD DIE

by: Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

F I should die,
And you should live,
And time should gurgle on,
And morn should beam,
And noon should burn,
As it has usual done;
If birds should build as early,
And bees as bustling go,--
One might depart at option
From enterprise below!
'Tis sweet to know that stocks will stand
When we with daisies lie,
That commerce will continue,
And trades as briskly fly.
It make the parting tranquil
And keeps the soul serene,
That gentlemen so sprightly
Conduct the pleasing scene!

http://www.poetry-archive.com/d/if_i_should_die.html

When talking about both Shakespeare’s and Dylan Thomas’s poems, Sonnet 73 and Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night respectively, death is the main point of conversation. The speaker of both poems is addressing a person about death; however in Sonnet 73 death is accepted, whereas in Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night death is unacceptable.

In Sonnet 73, Shakespeare is writing to a man, to which we are unsure of his relationship with Shakespeare, about an inevitable death. The poem is broken up into three quartets and a heroic couplet. The first three quartets show a progression from a long period of time to shorter period of time. For example, the first describes late fall and winter, the second describes a night, and the third describes a fire. The reason Shakespeare uses these three in comparison with each other is because the first two, a season and a night, are times in which it is implied that there will always be more. However, the last one, a fire, dies once it has burned out and thus it is not implied that there will always be more (McMann). Shakespeare does this to establish that the “fire” is a metaphor for life, and that the “ashes” is a metaphor for death. From this connection we can understand that the poem is indeed about death. Now that we know that it is about death, the heroic couplet plays greater meaning. In the couplet, Shakespeare writes “This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong. To love that well which thou must leave ere long.” Here Shakespeare is saying that we should accept death for what it is, but by doing so, this makes the world around us more beautiful because we can appreciate things that we won’t have for much longer. Death is perceived much differently in Dylan Thomas’s poem.

In Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, Thomas is addressing his father and his father’s fight against cancer. Unlike Shakespeare, Thomas doesn’t see death as something one should embrace. In fact, Thomas sees death as something that should be fought off for another day. We see this directly just by Thomas’s use of the refrain in his poem, “Rage, rage against the dying of the light,” or, “Do not go gentle into that good night.” This repeating of such strong, emotional phrases shows that Thomas fears for his father and is pleading his to fight it off.