Birdyline Book Blog

The art of poetry is an approach to communicating information in a richly visual way, one which has the ability to describe places beyond the extent of maps. Instead of literal pictures with labels, poems map the human train of thought and how one may respond to a place if present. Taiyon J. Coleman wrote in the Places Journal, “the poem as a map situates readers within larger contexts: cultural, historical, social, and spatial.” As poems are uniquely up for interpretation, a reader can look at what they’re reading through each of these contextual lenses, and they will discover new layers each time. 

There could be many possible answers to the question of what poetry’s purpose is. On one hand each poem has its own topic and narrator so of course each poem has an individual motive and goal. On the other hand, poetry as a whole is a literary tool. Good poems communicate thoughts, ideas, and facts in short forms about topics one could write books about. The reason they’re so successful in doing that is because they rely on a type of imagery that is relatable to all human beings. Concepts like belonging or betrayal, heartache or romance create the type of information that a person can not only read, but also feel. In many ways this purpose is the same as a map’s. Maps require very little education or scientific knowledge to understand the basics because one only needs to be able to look at the picture and observe where things are. 

I am going to be looking at two poems today, and will link both of them so that you can read them before I talk about them! Here’s the first one: (it’s on the very first page) Elizabeth Bishop

Looking at Elizabeth Bishop’s poem “The Map” we find a variety of information including both physical fact and much deeper details. The first line states “land lies in water” and then adds “it is shadowed green.” Her physical observations are then accompanied by soulful and human emotional descriptions. This portion of her poem, “The peninsulas take the water between thumb and finger/ like women feeling for the smoothness of yard-goods” is so intrinsically human, it crushes the limited ability of traditional maps to make a person feel a place. Poems do not only display where things are but how things are, and they feed into the natural human yearning to know why and how and who.

Bishop’s poem utilizes an ABBACDDC rhyme structure in its first and last stanza, but deviates from the pattern in the center. This gives the center stanza a breathless rhythm as the reader is presented with new observation after new observation. To further the contrast, in the first stanza we read about laborious actions referencing the water, such as “or does the land lean down to lift the sea from under,” and “is the land tugging on the sea from under?” In her final stanza nouns like “quiet,” “conformation,” and “agitation” give the reader a disappointed feeling. Only in the middle stanza does she allow herself to use happy, exciting verbs like “blossom,” “runs,” and “experiencing.” Bishop writes at the end of that center stanza that “the printer here experiencing the same excitement/as when emotion too far exceeds its cause.” This paints the cartographer as an artist like herself, and mirrors the excitement she herself is expressing in listing the fantastic images conjured of the land, only then to return to the familiar rhyming structure and another realization- that the map doesn’t show any of what she’s been expressing.  The images are all coming from within her own mind, not the “oiled” surface of the map. Her poem as a whole makes the conclusion that a map will always be incomplete without a human to interpret it.

In another poem, this one written by Eavan Boland, entitled “That the Science of Cartography is Limited,” the topic of what limits maps is more thoroughly explored. Read it here. Unlike “the Map,” Boland does not adhere to a specific rhyming structure. Her free verse poem rejects the rigid simplicity of maps and of history itself. Boland reflects on how one cannot find the smell of balsam or the feeling of gloom emanating from cypresses in any map, but that it is the least of the ways in which a map fails her. As the narrator looks down a “famine path,” they note the tragic deaths of those who died there. This road was started during the Irish Potato Famine, which Boland does not address by name. Perhaps this is purposeful, highlighting the importance of historical context that applies to maps and poems alike. Either way, the road and its horrible backstory is the central focus of the poem, and it begs a question- would a half-finished road overgrown now by ivy even appear on a map? Both Boland and the reader know that regardless a map could never tell you the history or heartache so tightly intertwined with the woodland passage. The poet says it best herself- that when she looks at a map of the island, “the line which says woodland and cries hunger/ and gives out among sweet pine and cypress/will not be there.” The line on the map depicting this abandoned road has become many lines of poetry and through this process it has become so much more profound. 

A poem’s purpose is to communicate- in many ways that applies to maps as well. However, the art of poetry allows human beings to translate feelings into knowledge in a way that maps never could. Despite not being a textbook or necessarily educational in nature, poems shed light on history as well as “mapping” out a person’s approach at observing what they’re writing about. Each poem, while only a small piece in the large map of human experience, has much to tell about the world.