Does "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" seem contrived or straitjacketed by the villanelle form?

The villanelle is a highly structured form utilizing much repetition that can easily lead to contrived, formulaic poetry. If not used carefully, the villanelle will call too much attention to the form and not enough to the content; the repeating lines could become overbearing. The form consists of 19 lines: 5 tercets followed by 1 quatrain, with the first and third lines of the first tercet alternating at the end of every following tercet, until both come together in the last two lines of the final quatrain. The first lines of all of the stanzas rhyme, as well as the second lines of all of the stanzas, resulting in only two rhymes for the whole nineteen lines: ABA ABA ABA ABA ABA ABAA. One key for a successful villanelle, therefore, is creating memorable first and third lines in the first tercet that can bear such repetition and even be transformed by the repetition. In addition, the poet must carefully set up the first two lines of each stanza to form a complete thought in order to set up the refraining third line.
Although in the 19th century, usage of the villanelle often focused on pastoral subjects or light verse meant to entertain (“vers de société”), 20th century usage of the form started to liberate the use of the villanelle to cover more serious subject matter. In Dylan Thomas’s famous villanelle “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night,” the subject is not light at all. The speaker is desperately begging his dying father to stay alive and not fade into death. But the wild emotion is effectively contained by the strict confines of the tightly disciplined poem. The villanelle is no straitjacket. Instead, the tight form allows the poet a way to channel and express his grief. Rather than spilling messily throughout the lines, the emotion is held in, but just barely, creating a dynamic tension between somber meditation and wild, blazing emotion.
The poet’s first line is also the title: “Do not go gentle into that good night.” The speaker addresses his father, urging him to resist the “good night,” a metaphor for death. He wants his father to struggle mightily against death’s grasp. The form of the villanelle adds to this interpretation; just as the father cannot break free from death’s hold, the poem too cannot break free from its form. The speaker wants the father to “rage, rage” against death, demanding violence to break free. These two lines alternate at the end of every tercet in powerful repetition, clearly conforming to the villanelle form.
After the first tercet, Thomas structures the content of each following tercet to focus on different types of men, whom he describes in two lines before returning to the refrain in the third line. For example, the second tercet focuses on the “wise men” who know that their time on earth is nearing the end, but “because their words had forked no lightning,” which could be interpreted to mean that they had never accomplished the brilliance that they hoped for, they too, like the father, are urged to resist death so they will have more time to accomplish their goals.
The third tercet focuses on the “good men,” who see all the possibilities of the “frail deeds” of their lives, which also have been left unfulfilled and will not be remembered. They also are urged to resist the call of death, as are the “wild men” of the fourth tercet, who lived bright and daring lives, not realizing that the brilliance of their trajectory was always heading toward the darkness of death. Alliteration runs through this poem, but especially in this fourth stanza, as can be seen by “sang the sun” and “learn, too late” and “grieved it on its way, / Do not go gentle into that good night.” These similar sounds allow the poem to pull in on itself, so that it becomes more unified. This works together with the villanelle’s incessant repetition, thus creating the singular effect of mourning.
The “grave men” of the final tercet ironically can only “see” once they have been “blinded.” Only at the end of their lives do they realize the power that they had in their grasp all of their lives, a power that they still have, despite the limitations of age. In this stanza, we can see the strong contrast of light and dark imagery, as the blind eyes are transformed into blazing “meteors,” heading toward the dark night.
The final stanza is a quatrain, again following villanelle form. These lines directly address the speaker’s father once again. The speaker asks the father, who stands on his final “sad height,” to “curse, bless me now.” The father’s proximity to death allows him a clarity in understanding the life he’s led, and the son is asking the father to share those final insights, even though it will be both a curse and blessing to live with such understanding. The refrain in the final two lines create a haunting, desperate cry. The reader expects these two lines to return due to the format of the villanelle. But now the repetition of the lines has been transformed, creating a sense of acceptance in the knowledge that fate that cannot be avoided. In the end, death will win.