by Mikaela Brewer for The 44 North
“The Albatross’s Sonnet to Western Civilization as the Madleen Sets Sail for Gaza” from Rattle’s Poets Respond June 17th, 2025.
Note: This poem is not in the public domain! Please use the link above to read it, alongside Tishani’s audio reading & notes about the poem. Further, here are helpful texts referenced in the poem: “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1834)” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and “Compare the courage of Greta Thunberg’s Gaza aid mission with the inaction and complicity of western governments” by Owen Jones for The Guardian.
Tishani Doshi writes poetry, fiction, and essays that explore the meeting of the lyrical and political. The body recurs in her writing, stemming from fifteen years working as the lead dancer of the Chandralekha company in Madras, India. In her work, the body is “a vehicle to explore gender, violence, sexuality and power, but also as an agent of renewal and transformation.” Doshi’s writing has won and been shortlisted for numerous awards, including the Forward Prize, the Ted Hughes Award, the Hindu Fiction Prize, Tata Fiction Award, and the RSL Ondaatje Prize. She is an Associate Professor of Literature and Creative Writing at New York University, Abu Dhabi, and a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (paraphrased from her website).
Truthfully, the last time I read Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” was in high school. Still a difficult read, enacting archaic English spelling, it’s fascinating to revisit now. You don’t need to have read it to experience Doshi’s poem, so in brief summary, it’s a long poem about the mental, spiritual, and physical consequences of violating nature (the mariner senselessly kills an albatross while he and his crew are at sea, and faces an onslaught of suffering).
I was captivated by the question inherent in Doshi’s poem: if the albatross were to speak—in sonnet, one of the most well-used and unique of Western poetic forms, typically used in praise or love of a beloved—what might it say, now, flying above a humanitarian aid ship bound for Gaza, by which we mean and know: bound to not reach Gaza? For me, more haunting than the question was that I already knew its answer. I’d wager most of us do. And yet, “Remember, when all of this was going on, / there were some who were homesick for the world / and what it could have been, and others who were silent.”
Typically, a ‘traditional’ sonnet has fourteen lines, set in iambic pentameter, and utilizes a particular rhyme scheme: Petrarchan sonnets are ABBA ABBA CDECDE or ABBA ABBA CDCDCD, and Shakespearean sonnets are ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. In Petrarchan sonnets, there is one octave (eight-line stanza) followed by a sestet (six-line stanza). In a Shakespearean sonnet, there are three quatrains (four-line stanzas) followed by a couplet (two-line stanza). There is always a volta before the final stanza—the poem’s transition or turning point.
Right away, we notice that the poem bends many of these “rules”. It doesn’t follow traditional form, which to me indicates a need: to first understand/acknowledge a “rule” and then to break it. I wonder if this is why there are echoes of traditional form, particularly with rhyme in the middle of lines (end & friends, malfunctioning & unveiling, coat & told & globe, seen & besieged, and do & two, for example). Similarly, the volta appears with an em dash and a question: “what we’ve seen what we’ve seen what we’ve seen— / will you still ask, What can one boat do for the besieged?” It’s as if the albatross is saying, “I know your tools well, and I will try to use them to make you listen.” The rhyming words scattered throughout the poem amplify this, giving a sense of crumbling. The empire of Western civilization is falling apart and “coming to an end.”
Further, rhyme slants and tapers off as the poem moves. The last few lines don’t rhyme as much and feel matter-of-fact. But exceptionally poignant is the fact that the obvious rhyme with “been” in the very last line is “Madleen.” Instead, the final word is “silent.”
Stepping into imagery, we have the “friends” of Western civilization on a beach. I had to pause and think about who these friends might be, especially in conjunction with the “sheepskin coat.” All point to the uncompromising and unquestioning rule-following—“I only did what I was told”—bedrock among this family of civilizations, all of which followed one another, led like sheep, right off of a cliff.
Last but certainly not least, the repetition Doshi uses with “what we’ve seen” three times alongside the preceding “when we’ve seen” leads into the volta. To me, this feels resonant of social media: we’re (necessarily) bearing witness to violence that so overwhelms our hearts we can’t describe it—all we can do is repeat, re-share, and repost phrases and clips. Interestingly, a version of this happens in “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” After the mariner shoots the albatross down, the ship becomes trapped at sea, stuck without a breeze. The crew becomes so thirsty that they lose the ability to speak. This parallel is powerful, particularly after the Madleen was captured. Of everyone who wasn’t on board, who continued to speak when the Madleen’s passengers couldn’t? Poetry has an irreplaceable way of resourcing us with these types of questions and conversations. What a brilliant, needed poem. I hope we can all spend more time with it (and all of Tishani Doshi’s work).
