With it’s tight structure, poetry can accommodate great passion. Do :: English Literature

With it’s tight structure, poetry can accommodate great passion. Do you agree with this statement? You should base your answer on a close examination of two or three poems covering at least two groups. ‘With it’s tight structure, poetry can accommodate great passion’. Do you agree with this statement? You should base your answer on a close examination of two or three poems covering at least two groups. Although it could be argued that poetry can accommodate great passion I disagree with this statement. The two poems I have chosen to examine, ‘Marged’ by Gillian Clarke and ‘Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night’ by Dylan Thomas, show different emotions that I believe disprove the statement. The first, ‘Marged’, is lacking in emotion and the second, ‘Do Not Go Gentle’, does more than accommodate the passion, it emphasises and releases the feelings felt by the poet. ‘Marged’ by Gillian Clarke is a Shakespearean sonnet, with three quatrains and a couplet at the end, however the poet has altered the form to change the style of the poem. For example the lines do not have ten syllables as a normal sonnet but vary in length. Also there is only a half-rhyme scheme with words such as ‘bed’ and ‘died’ in the first quatrain on alternate lines. It could be argued that the tight structure of the sonnet restrains the passion felt because of the syllables but as Gillian Clarke has ignored this rule and has different numbers of syllables this sonnet does not constrain passion. This argument would apply more if Clarke had written a passionate poem but as it is the poem is lacking in emotion of any kind. ‘Marged’ is about Clarke thinking of the previous owner of the house she lives in. The words do not emote a sad mood; Clarke is remembering the dead old lady but is herself distanced from the death and therefore does not feel sad. The use of the preposition ‘she’ shows the reader that the feelings are distanced; use of ‘you’ would have made the poem more direct and emotional. In contrast to this, ‘Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night’ by Dylan Thomas is a very emotional poem in the traditional form of a villanelle. 'Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night' is addressed to the poets father and is plea that the man doesn’t die quietly. The use of ‘you’ makes the poem very personal and it is clear from the start of the poem that the poet feels very strongly about the issue. In the title and first line the emphasis is on the words ‘Not’ and