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George Georgiev
Professor Blandford
Writing and Inquiry
September 29 2015
Poetry vs Prose
Throughout Do not go gentle into that good night, the rhetor, Dylan Thomas writes to
us about life and the more specific aspect of it, death. The reason why these two seemingly polar
opposite topics relate is because death has to be accepted as a part of life. We will all eventually
experience the dying of the night. This is what Dylan Thomas was relating to in the writing of
this poem. He wanted to illustrate to the audience (who can be anyone that has lost a family
member or is losing one) that although a good man such as his father whose life is almost over
has not lived life to the fullest. His judgement of his father shows that he believed his father
lacked the vital and fertile elements to human existence. In this entertaining yet informative
poem Dylan Thomas dives into the true message that, although his father was a good man, he
had never fully experienced the joys that human life offers. They have not, in their lives, caused
any great stir among humankind (their words had forked no lightning). Which is part of the
reason why the author was advising his father not to go gentle into that good night.
Authors can express themselves through poems of all variations. For example, when one
initially listens to a rap song they typically understand the message behind the lyrics. But when
one reads a poem such as the one described above, they find it more difficult to decipher. Song
lyrics are poems. When you look up your favorite song lyrics you see how the lyrics are
landscaped in a way that resembles a poem. In fact those lyrics are organized into stanzas and

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they typically have a rhyme scheme similar to that of a poem. I believe most of us can agree that
poems are more difficult to interpret than song lyrics, but it is not because of the contentrather
the manner in which the content is displayed. My point being that most poems are detailed and
need to be further analyzed and they also include some convoluted sentence structure. On the
other hand, song lyrics tend to be more straightforward with a simpler way of describing the
message behind the writing.
Poetry and song lyrics can provide a better understanding of specific topics compared to
that of prose. Poetry creates its own truth, which at times is the same truth as the worlds, and
sometime not. Whatever the case, poetry is always a rearrangement between the seen and the
felt. It is the more efficient communicator of ideas. The flexibility of poetry makes it much
more desirable for communication than prose because the way in which one can access poetry is
much simpler and one has the ability to better analyze poetrys deeper meanings. Because prose
is more straightforward we can better understand it, but it is more generalized. While poetry is
more specific to a certain topic which allows for better means of communicating certain ideas.
The use of poetry and song lyrics has not exactly altered our understanding of the literary
themes. Rather, these types of literacy make the reader dive deeper into the text to analyze the
true meaning behind the writing. This doesnt cause the reader to gain a different understanding
of the text, but instead they alter the specific axis at which emotions are felt. This leads the
reader to a more complex and specific level of understandingwhere the whereabouts of prose
would provide a more straightforward and basic understanding. So, the topic is still the same, but
the emotions being evoked may be much different.