Wildly uneven episode. Playing the diplomatic issues between the two alien races as nearly comedic steals away all the emotional impact of an otherwise interesting story line with Picard and Crusher. It’s never felt like a secret that Picard’s and Crusher’s feelings for each other run deeper than friendship, so it was nice to see that explored here, though they went too far – the episode should have just taken them to the verge of admitting feelings and then pulled back. Regardless, the other story line would have been good had the aliens not come off as dopey conspiracy minded dopes. There was a very good story hiding in all this mess that feels like it never got past a first draft and a looming schedule to meet. Too bad; this episode was a serious missed opportunity.
Daily Archives: May 23, 2019
Adrift! A little boat adrift!
The poem’s formal qualities are interesting. She uses an ABCB scheme for the first stanza, DBEB for the second, then goes to FGHHI in the final stanza where the final line, “And shot – exultant on!” mimics the action of the boat escaping from the poem on its continued adventure. Perhaps she is doing this because the stanzas one and two deal with the affairs of men, “sailors” who have gone “adrift” and “gurgled down and down” (notice how the word down shares a quality with the word drown). However, the final stanza deals with the “angels” who “retrimmed” and “redecked” the wayward “little boat” and sent it on its way and thus a new rhyme needs to be introduced (sort of like a miracle) to represent the saving of the ship, or perhaps guiding the drowned sailors to a new life in the afterlife. The rising action of the rhyme scheme does suggests a rising towards heaven.
One thing that is missing from the first stanza is a lighthouse. With “night” “coming” down, there is no guidance for the sailors and thus there is danger that they will run aground upon the rocks since they have lost control of their vessel. Is Emily suggesting that what she needs, perhaps in regard to her poetry, is guidance? The poem begins with a rather typical rhyme scheme and its central image is that of something that has gotten away from whomever is controlling it.
The second stanza continues the image of a sailor’s danger and in the first line she tells us that the “sailor’s say” there was an accident where a “little boat gave up its strife” which also shares the rhyme with the word life suggesting all hands were lost as they were spilled out into the sea. What’s clever here is she begins the stanzas with the sailor’s speaking, but ends it with them gurgling: they are unable to speak.
If Emily is writing about writing (which she does a lot), the third stanza is quite clever because it suggests another rhyme scheme from an old sailor’s saying: “red sky at night is a sailor’s delight, but red sky at morning the sailors take warning.” She suggests this with the line “dawn was red”, but since she can’t rely on mere sailors to guide her because what they say can lead to panic and ruin just as she can’t rely on mere novices to guide her poetry because what do they know, therefore she needs a lighthouse, a miracle of angles to set her, and her poem free.
Perhaps the end of the poem is her having once again found the inspiration she needs to keep writing poetry and its upward trajectory of the rhyme scheme FGHHI suggests inspiration is found in heaven.