Commentary on "Otherwise". The poem Otherwise by Cilla McQueen portrays a long distance relationship between two lovers and the problems they share.

The visual imagery in the poem also shows the conflict between the two and the void they share. The images like “I watch often not traffic or television but hour by hour the huge tide absently fingering rocks and small shells” show the physical distance between them and the way they are separated by contrasting countries. Images like “where big chained rocks hold back the same Pacific Ocean, lumbering in.” shows how the speaker wants to be back with her lover. She wants to leave behind the distance and live together with no barriers separating them from each other. The rocks also signify how she wants the two of them to be together for all eternity and hold back all the problems they will face together. The visual imagery shows the conflict between the speaker’s want and reality. In the first stanza the speaker highlights the physical distance between her and her lover and also hints at an emotional distance. In the second stanza she shows that she longs to be closer to her lover and have no separation between them but the reality is very different.

“Otherwise”, the title of the poem is very significant in the main contrast of the poem. The title shows the contrast between what the speaker desires and what reality is for her. She wants to be close to the man she loves without having any barriers but in reality, she is far, gar away from him with little hope of seeing him again. She is trying to say that because they are so far apart there are many barriers between them. “Otherwise” if they were closer, there would be no barriers and they would be together as one. Since the physical barrier is making their relationship impossible, they cannot be together.

The change in tone from sad to a more hopeful one, from the first stanza to the second of this two-stanza play is interesting to note. In the first stanza, the speaker is sad that she and her lover are very far apart from each other. The tone of the stanza expresses the pain she feels because of both the physical and emotional distance between her and her lover. She talks of the contrast she and her lover have because of the distance between them and this brings out the sadness in the paragraph along with the visual imagery. In the second stanza, the tone changes to a more hopeful one. She wishes to be with her lover and is dreaming of being with him on her favorite beach. She hopes that she will meet him and the dream she is having adds to the hopeful tone of the passage. The visual imagery of the two rocks also adds to the tone of hope with her hope that they will be together as one and will be able to hold back an ocean off problems.

In conclusion we can see that Cilla McQueen creates a situation of the problems faced by two people who are separated by physical distance and by emotional distance. The use of the setting, visual imagery and tone contributes to the main theme of the poem of  the pain felt by the speaker because of the emotional and physical distance she ahs with her lover.