Here's something that I stumbled across the other day, and I immediately thought of "Do Not Go Gentle." Donald Crowdis is 93 years old. He's apparently lived a full life. But "it bothers me that I have to go." As Thomas Gray will ask us later this semester
For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey,
This pleasing anxious being e'er resign'd,
Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,
Nor cast one longing lingering look behind?
Legend has it that Dylan Thomas literally drank himself to death ("18 straight whiskies; I think it's a record"). Like many great stories, it ought to be true -- Thomas was did everything in a big way -- but it's most likely apocryphal. It may have been bad doctors rather than drink that did the Welsh poet in.
P.S. "Do Not Go Gentle" is a villanelle. What's a villanelle?
1 comment:
The article "bad doctors" was frightening. The chance that Thomas's legacy was tainted for fifty years because a doctor didn't own up to his mistake is appalling.
This "bad doctors" revelation changes my image of Thomas. He writes about fighting death, and the "drinking death" version of events fits this attitude, while the "infection/ incompetant doctors death" doesn't fit.
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