Poetry is pure gibberish to me. I just dont get it. Never have.
So i never knew what the poems were supposed to mean so i dont and never did factor the quality of the poems as written.
Heres how i relate to these scenes in this show
The show is set 300 years from now roughly.
300 years ago was 1700
Data’s poems are obviously written for the audience(us) to understand and as such they are actually twentieth century poems both in the real world, but also in the fiction universe as twentieth century style poems written by an android in the twenty fourth century.
Think about that superposition for a second.
Datas poetry to the other characters in the show is essentially just an archaic style that just isnt popular to the culture of the people he is around and data is writing stuff that has been done many times over by people who are way better at it that he is.
Like me writting you reading this a poem that is similar in style to red red rose by robert burns.
My love is like a red red rose… etc
It being actually good poetry isnt the point, but its a kind of poetry that has already been done and isnt modern poetry to the other members of the crew. They would need a specific interest in the style data was going for becauase in all of datas creative efforts its abundantly clear he is mimicking the forms of art he creates in an attempt to understand emotion. Hes essentially trying to reverse engineer an understanding of emotion by creating new works in a style, and then querying the results to see if the emotions his works create match the style he mimicks and then uses those result to apply to himself. In a shell game kind of way, but not exactly
To put it another way, reading finnegans wake by most people who arent prepared for it, is an incredibly painful experience because yes you can understand and read the words, but that doesnt mean it was an enjoyable experience
Edit: i kinda lost focus here. Might rewrite what im trying to say. Or just delete it later.
Is there any way of finding out who actually wrote it, and whether Data’s two poems were by the same author? - I mean in “out of universe” terms.
Some scriptwriter/poet, wrote an episode, including a poem in the style of a futuristic android coming to terms with human nature - to the point we can all find meaning and parallel in the work spoken by a fictional character… and I think that shows some real skills.
Highly recommend Old Possum’s book of practical cats by T S Elliot for more whimsical cat poetry. The Rum Tum Tugger will be eminently familiar to anyone who’s ever owned a cat.
I have the first stanza of Ode to Spot committed to memory. I made no effort to do so and I haven’t seen that episode an exorbitant number of times, but I can still recite it on demand.
The cat one is enjoyable in a stylistic way, but the first one is just generally good. It’s a little bit sad, showing two people sharing a sunset on a beach together, and ends with one side feeling alone even while sharing the moment. It’s like, to the narrator, the science of it, the how of it doesn’t detract from the beauty of it, it’s what makes it beautiful. And the other person makes it seem like to think about it is to stop enjoying it.
It’s got irony, it’s got depth, it seems like it represents a lot of Data’s experiences, and it does it with a pleasant scene. I think that poem was fantastic, and it blows my mind that the people in that room would be anything but impressed.
Plus he asks geordi’s opinion, of all people, about feelings on a somewhat romantic, wistful poem. Geordi, whose idea of creating a romantic atmosphere is to awkwardly half lie half sit on a beach towel while a rando circles around playing violin at you.
Data has troubles understanding emotion, but this poem is about a win in that regard.
It’s about two lovers or friends watching the sunset. One of them is enjoying the beauty on an emotional level. The other is enjoying it on a platonic level, because that is Data. Data starts explaining how the scientific processes cause the view, but the other person tells data to shut up, silently hinting that they just want to enjoy the moment with Data. Data picks up on that hint and stops talking to simply enjoy the sunset together. Picking up on that social que, was a huge accomplishment for data, that’s why he wrote a poem about it.
There’s no sadness at all. It’s all about overcoming you limitations. It’s a celebration.
I’ve only been able to get over his misuse of “obviate” by assuming the word evolved in a couple hundred years because not enough people knew its meaning in the 21st century.
I had to look it up I have never heard this word used besides in this poem and just assumed it meant "makes obvious" but I learned something new today! It means "to remove, prevent or avoid" for those like me who did not know.
When you think about it his development is like that of a child or a teenager. He may collect and process lots of information but he has to interact with people in order to learn how to relate to people, interpret their emotions, relate his own emotions and understand the complex, complicated, contradictory and constantly changing attitudes of every being … it makes you realize that sometimes we’re not so good at it either.
I had not even thought about that but you're totally right. I guess Riker plays the sax and Picard has his flute but I can't remember either of them writing original songs
He’s also in pottery class when everyone else is a child. It’s almost shown like Starfleet doesn’t value new art and it’s only a thing for children. Obviously not true but it’s just odd that Data was the only one who was really making new art on the Enterprise and not recycling shit from hundreds of years prior.
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