1. Poems about death Elizabeth Bishop & Dylan Thomas
ENGL1001~UNBSJ~ ~Dr. M. Jones

2. Today Elizabeth Bishop, “First Death in Nova Scotia”
Dylan Thomas, “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”

3. Elizabeth Bishop 1911–1979 prize-winning American poet
lived with grandparents in rural NS for part of childhood
BA, Vassar, 1934

4. “First Death in Nova Scotia”
First published in Questions of Travel (1965)
Based on events from her childhood in Nova Scotia

5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Village
Elizabeth Bishop House (Bulmer House), Great Village, NS: artists’ retreat and Nova Scotia Provincially Recognized Heritage Site

6. First Death in Nova Scotia
In the cold, cold parlor
my mother laid out Arthur
beneath the chromographs:
Edward, Prince of Wales,
with Princess Alexandra,
and King George with Queen Mary.
Below them on the table
stood a stuffed loon
shot and stuffed by Uncle
Arthur, Arthur’s father.

7. Since Uncle Arthur fired
a bullet into him,
he hadn’t said a word.
He kept his own counsel
on his white, frozen lake,
the marble-topped table.
His breast was deep and white,
cold and caressable;
his eyes were red glass,
much to be desired.

8. “Come,” said my mother,
“Come and say good-bye
to your little cousin Arthur.”
I was lifted up and given
one lily of the valley
to put in Arthur’s hand.
Arthur’s coffin was
a little frosted cake,
and the red-eyed loon eyed it
from his white, frozen lake.

9. Arthur was very small.
He was all white, like a doll
that hadn’t been painted yet.
Jack Frost had started to paint him
the way he always painted
the Maple Leaf (Forever).
He had just begun on his hair,
a few red strokes, and then
Jack Frost had dropped the brush
and left him white, forever.

10. The gracious royal couples
were warm in red and ermine;
their feet were well wrapped up
in the ladies’ ermine trains.
They invited Arthur to be
the smallest page at court.
But how could Arthur go,
clutching his tiny lily,
with his eyes shut up so tight
and the roads deep in snow?

11. Dylan Thomas 1914–1953 Born in Swansea, Wales
A "roistering, drunken and doomed poet”
One of the great modernist poets

12. “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”
Villanelle
Written 1947
Said to be about Thomas’ father
First published in Botteghe Oscure in 1951

13. 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.

14. 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 grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

15. 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 that sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.

16. Villanelle: “A French verse form consisting of five three-line stanzas and a final quatrain, with the first and third lines of the first stanza repeating alternately in the following stanzas. These two refrain lines form the final couplet in the quatrain.”
–Poetry Foundation
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17. Discussion How do the narrative voices compare?
How does the form affect our reading of each poem?

18. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dylan_Thomas
The Boat House, Laugharne, the Thomas family home from 1949