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Dickinson’s Poetry

Many of Emily Dickinson’s poems share a similar interest in death and explore the relationship that individuals have with their own death. This alone makes it worth linking Thomas’s villanelle to her poetry. 

Donne’s Poetry

The paradox that unfolds in the fifth tercet of Thomas’s poem distantly recalls the kind of complex conceits that John Donne made famous in his so-called “metaphysical” poems. 

Claude McKay, “If We Must Die”

“If We Must Die” and “Do not go gentle into that good night” share a similar interest in facing death bravely. The sociopolitical charge is obviously quite different in the case of the McKay, but the poems are nonetheless thematically connected.

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