Thomas:
As I understand it, the purpose of a villanelle is to create some sort of centrality and continuity through a special form of repetition. Thomas does so by focusing on how he feels people, regardless of the lives they lived, should go about dying. "Wise men," "good men," "wild men," and "grave men," despite differences in the lives they lived, should still "not go gentle into that good night." By using villanelle, Thomas is able to promote a universal philosophy of resisting death, a stance he personalizes in the last stanza by addressing his father.
Roethke:
This poem is less clear than Thomas', but focuses (at least literally) on waking and sleeping. Roethke's most oft repeated line involves paradox, so his use of the villanelle draws value principally from its forcing the reader to consider what it means to "wake to sleep." Each stanza examines some aspect of life, and the contradictions and intentionality required within, though delineations between each subject are unclear.
I believe Thomas employed villanelle better than Roethke because his repeated lines clearly serve to universalize his precept, while Roethke's serve a general point of emphasis but not as valuable of a specific role.
Bishop:
Bishop emphasizes loss, and her use of villanelle is different from and, I believe, superior to Thomas' or Roethke's. She employs villanelle to apply a lesson throughout a steady escalation of circumstances--adding another level of structure to Thomas' use of villanelle for universalizability. She begins by describing the loss of a key, then the loss of a minor detail to forgetfulness, then finally to a relationship and throughout, she contends that "the art of losing isn't hard to master."
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