The Map (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Elizabeth Bishop
- First Published: 1935
- Type of Work: Lyric
- Genres: Poetry, Lyric poetry
- Subjects: Perception, Historians, Truth, Fantasy, Imagination, Water, Ocean, Norway or Norwegians, Geography, Maps
The Poem
“The Map” is a descriptive poem divided into three stanzas. The first and last are eight-line stanzas with repeated Petrarchan rhyme schemes (abbacddc), while the longer central stanza is written in free verse.
In “The Map,” Elizabeth Bishop records her thoughts on the nature of a map’s relationship to the real world. Implicitly, the poem asks why maps fascinate people so much. The poet suggests that the human fascination with small-scale representations of land and water has to do with the imagined worlds maps can offer, the images of far-off...
[The entire page is 1655 words long]
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