"Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" 286, pg 336

            “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” is a poem written by a son to his father as his beloved hero is dying.  He is pleading with his father not to give up the fight and succumb to death.  He talks of different types of men: wise, good, wild, grave, and then the best of all, his father.  Each type of man would not go gently into the darkness of death, but would “rage, rage against the dying of the light”.  That line and the title itself are commands repeated by the son.  From this perspective, the father seems to have lived a life of valiancy, and although it is his father’s time and old age has coming knocking at his doorstep, the son begs the father to not give up.  Having said that, he also desires what is in the best interest of his father.  He does not want him to suffer, but rather, to fight; and if that battle is lost, it is more than permissible, for he fought until the bitter end.  Furthermore, embrace death for all its worth; do not just resign to it.

This powerful villanelle arouses immediacy and intimacy.  A very close family friend of mine passed away due to cancer last night.  He fought courageously and whole-heartedly, for himself and for his family.  He was the father of two children, right around my age.  Picturing this poem, I see the image of my good friends sitting beside their father’s bedside until his final moments, asking him to make every breath count, just as the son does in the poem toward his father.  Every moment is a blessing, and they all had asked their patriarch to not give up the fight.  Ultimately, I presume in the poem as well, the man passes away.  However, they do not succumb to death.  They embraced life, fought bravely like they had all their lives, and marched humbly on into that “Good Night”.

"Getting Through" 265, pg. 322

“Getting Through,” by Deborah Pope, has a continuous form.  The only period, a conclusion of thought, comes at the end of the poem.  The speaker rambles on, “and my words hurtling past, like a train off its track,” comparing hurtful, difficult, and suffocating situations with the loss of her lover.  The first reference as to whom the speaker is comes with the line, “so I go on loving you,” proving that she cannot help nor change her circumstance.  This also addresses to whom she is speaking, her lost love.  Extrapolating from the title and the many examples given, such as “a car stuck in gear” and an unlived in house with the persistent ringing of a phone - a stagnant memory - and layers upon layers of dust covering unforgotten times, the desperate plight of the speaker is understood.  Most, if not all, people experience love, and this combined with the authors previously stated metaphors, creates a tone of solemnity, of relativity.  Her obvious desire to rid herself of the painful memories and love she still harbors for him is blatantly said at the end of the poem.  After she lists comparable concepts, she realizes that this is her heart releasing what she no longer wants.  She has confined this sadness and merely “gotten through it” for too long, and now she is ready to let go.  She is the “last speaker of a beautiful language no one else can hear” – that love.

Love is a feeling, an experience, an indescribable emotion so passionately and unequivocally felt that when lost, part of the soul is also lost. And unreturned.  However, that is completely biased.  For me, I’ve only known honest, shared love a time or two in my life.  There is a parent’s love and a friend’s love, but a love that cannot compare is one shared with a lover.  To know if you have experienced love, perhaps you have to lose it.  It is that emptiness, that empty house that no one lives in but the phone still rings when certain senses evoke the memories passed, that will always remain.  Getting through that is no simple task.  It is arguably one of the most difficult things anyone could experience.  After all, life is love.  Thus, when someone, like the reader, so easily lists the pain she has from this loss and the hardship of “getting through” it, an instant relation arises.  The colloquial diction adds to the familiarity of this everyday phenomenon.  Ironically, the last phrase is quite oxymoronic.  “Everyday phenomenon.”  It occurs to us all, but “getting through it,” as the author states, is the hardest part.