In Joe Dator’s cartoon, the Ancient Mariner from Coleridge’s poem is standing barefoot and alone at a cocktail party, with the albatross tied around his neck. To his left, a female guest says something to her partner.
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Coleridge’s longest poem, is about a sailor who recounts his story of a horrific voyage to a sometimes exasperated man who’s on his way to a wedding, so I first thought the Mariner would be the kind of guest one would want to avoid at a party.
- “He just went on and on about some awful cruise.”
- “He talks only about himself. I couldn’t get a word in edgewise.”
- “It’s an interesting story but long.”
- “He talked and talked but didn’t ask me one question about myself.”
Then I focused on the fact that Rime is a poem:
- “Time to go. He’s about to start reciting poetry.”
- “I couldn’t understand a word. It’s like one of those poems in The New Yorker.”
- “Oh, come on. It won’t kill you to listen to one poem.”
- “I like some poetry, but that was so dark.”
Finally, I focused on the albatross, but not as a symbol of the Mariner’s burden:
- “He must be the caterer.”
- “Give me a minute to talk to the caterer.”
Now let’s see how you did.
Many of you presumed that the Mariner misunderstood the meaning of BYOB:
- “He thinks it meant Bring Your Own Bird.”
- “The invitation did say BYOB.”
- “I don’t think that’s what BYOB means.”
- “I begged you to spell out BYOB.”
I like that fourth entry best because it adds a component (tension between the two hosts) that’s missing from the other BYOB captions.
The albatross in Coleridge’s poem is a burden or curse, and many of you had the woman recognizing this fact:
- “You’ll always be my albatross.”
- “That reminds me. Your mother called today.”
- “His curse is localized upper neck pain.”
Some of you, however, had the woman assuming (or fearing) that the albatross was something else entirely, like dinner:
- “I hope that’s not the chef.”
- “I hope that’s not dinner.”
- “He’s the chef.”
- “Honey, can you tip the caterer?”
- “Dear, I need to speak with you about the caterer.”
- “He thought it was potluck.”
Or a necklace:
- “I love the way he accessorizes.”
- “Oh, that reminds me. Thanks for the necklace.”
- “Never buy me a necklace like that.”
Or a misguided attempt to compete with the Icelandic musician who wore a swan dress to the 73rd Academy Awards:
- “Bjork wore it better.”
- “He’s no Bjork.”
Here are three more albatross captions I love:
- “Make it a positive. Compliment his aim.”
- “I told you not to give him a plus one.”
- “I don’t know, it didn’t come up in the conversation.”
That last caption would be stronger if the comma were replaced with a period.
Many of alluded to the fact that the Mariner’s story is long and depressing, and I especially liked these six entries:
- “It’s a long story.”
- “Let’s go before he starts talking about his trip again.”
- “Don’t get him started.”
- “Trust me. You don’t want to know.”
- “That was 15 minutes of my life I’ll never get back.”
- “He loves to talk about himself.”
That last caption is very similar but vastly superior to one of my own.
The next two captions address quite different reactions to the Mariner’s tale of woe:
- “And I thought we had a bad cruise.”
- “For God’s sake, we all have our problems.”
As I did, many of you alluded to the fact that the Mariner’s tale is a poem, but the best of these captions managed to make this allusion without giving in, as I did, to the temptation to criticize poetry: “He told me all about his cruise in verse.”
As long as I’m acknowledging my shameful tendency to mock art forms I don’t understand (which includes not just poetry, but operas and oratorios with scriptural texts), I want to highlight two captions that address another art form I don’t appreciate as much as I should:
- “It’s performance art.”
- “I don’t get performance art.”
The next three captions were, I assume, submitted by people with more than just a passing familiarity with Coleridge’s poem, as they allude to the lines “water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink:”
- “He just wants water.”
- “He’ll have water.”
- “He needs a drop of water.”
Whoever submitted the next entry also appears to know the poem well, as he or she remembered that the Mariner told his cautionary tale to a wedding guest: “He seems to think this is a wedding.”
Here’s a fine caption that would be even better without the exclamation point: “I told you we should have brought a gift!”
As most of you probably know, both CartoonStock and The New Yorker now crowdsource their caption contests by giving readers an opportunity to review and rate each entry, and I’ve noticed that many contestants have recently been making essentially the same topical joke: Any 2020 nominee for President would be better than Trump. For instance, a recent New Yorker contest featured a Harry Bliss drawing of a man walking his dog at night and under a full moon and running into a large and terrifying werewolf. The man looks surprisingly calm and is saying something to his dog, and many of the people who entered that contest had the man saying something like this: “Yes…even him. Anybody but Trump.” As it happens, that was one of the entries submitted for our Ancient Mariner contest, and I think it’s the best of the topical jokes.
I always appreciate a caption that highlights the speaker’s obliviousness, and this entry (which has the woman focusing not on the Mariner but on another guest in the background) is an especially fine example: “Is it just me, or is there something odd about that fellow with his leg crossed?”
And here are four terrific captions that don’t fit neatly into any category:
- “Don’t let him fool you, he showed up in a Tesla.”
- “You can’t just ignore the host.”
- “Actually, he broke up with me.”
- “I think that’s David Letterman.”
It’s not easy to choose a winner out of forty-three such strong entries—the largest group I’ve ever had to select from—but I’m going with a caption that not only addresses both Coleridge’s poem and the cocktail party setting, but is also pretty funny: “And I thought we had a bad cruise.”