Life — June 22, 1922 — page 11: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# Analysis This page contains two distinct pieces of humorous content: **"What Are the Wild Waves Saying?"** is a comedic dialogue among personified ocean waves warning each other about dangers to swimmers—undertows, the need to swim properly, and a woman they plan to "teach" by nearly drowning her. The humor relies on treating waves as gossips with malicious intent. **"Rondeau"** is a poem by D.P. expressing romantic melancholy about a absent lover, complaining that nature's beauty seems diminished without them. The accompanying illustration shows a prospector or cowboy figure, apparently unrelated to the poem's sentiment, with a caption expressing hunger ("I wish someone'd drop in on me an' have grub"). The prospector cartoon appears to be satirizing the disconnect between romantic poetry and harsh frontier reality, or offering visual comedy through incongruity.