Analysing Watching for Dolphins: D. Constantine
Isolation & Communal Experience Reign in This Highly Regarded Poem
Watching for Dolphins is a poem that looks to explore the feelings of isolation and fleeting desire, and it strives to achieve this on two levels; the boat passengers searching the sea for the expected Dolphins, and the narrator craving nothing the experience of a special moment, shared.
As the poem unfolds, the desperation of the passengers to experience an unearthly moment grows so undeniably that they turn to prayer and hopeful epiphany.
The crux of this exploration comes from the contrasts of a conceived divine experience in stanzas four and five, and the disappointment of loneliness in stanza six.
Disappointment, Isolation - Singularity in Watching for Dolphins
This sentiment is best characterised in the last stanza, most notably in the lines, “We had not seen the Dolphins / But woke, blinking”, and, “With no admission of disappointment the company / Dispersed and prepared to land in the city”.
The notion of waking and blinking implies a sense of fantasy – on the boat, the passengers want nothing more than to see the Dolphins “smiling, snub-nosed, domed like satyrs”, but as they approach land and “the great tankers”, the concept of a magical and influential experience leaves them. Each stanza previously builds to this dramatic point, and Constantine’s message; the nature of desire.
Watching for Dolphins and Failed Experience
Throughout, Constantine makes references to the vast amount of people waiting for the moment. In the second stanza, he writes: “…even the lovers / Turned their desires on the sea”, “…a fat man / stared like a saint through sad bi-focals”, and, “others, hopeless themselves, looked to the children”. Constantine describes a wide range of people; the self-absorbed lovers, the lonely fat man, and those who have lost the ability to experience magical moments in their hopelessness, who can only look to their children.
Despite this wide range of people, Constantine opposes this sense of community with the line, “…no acknowledgement of a common purpose”. Additionally, he writes, “…every face / after its character implored the sea”, and “We could not imagine more prayer”. In spite of this togetherness in means, none of the passengers acknowledge the excitement of the others. In stanzas four and five, Constantine writes:
“…and had they then
On the waves, on the climax of our longing come
Smiling snub-nosed, domed like satyrs, oh
We should have laughed and lifted the children up
Stranger to Stranger”
Through the aforementioned techniques, David Constantine successfully explores the notions of fleeting desire and isolation. The narrator aches for the knowledge that the company might experience beauty together, mimicking and outstripping the shallow pursuit of the elusive dolphins.
Underpinning this desire is a feeling of isolation; no divine moment comes, and everyone, including the narrator, leaves, unaffected, alone, off into the city. Constantine depicts this through the juxtaposition of anti-climactic content and steadily hyperbolic structure that serves as a way of illustrating false hope and failed experience.
Constantine: Poet Behind Watching for Dolphins
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