"The Map"

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that Elizabeth Bishop, who died in 1979 and was one of the most honored poets of her time, illustrates the cold and frozen North of her Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland and Nova Scotia heritage in her poem "The Map". The author points out that parsing a poem is like dissecting a butterfly to see what makes it flutter: "The Map" is the poet's guide for our imagination; no more; no less. The paper relates that Bishop's physical frail frame expanded in her mind and captured the essence of a land about which she could only dream, but "The Map" is no romantic fantasy rather a shrewd, sparse, straightforward account of the land of the North.

From the Paper:

"Poets are, it must be argued, different from novelists or scientists or philosophers, who tend to try to surpass one another. Poets stand alone. They write what they see and what they feel. They owe no allegiance to history. Only the history of their own lives, as it invests their memories, as the Newfoundland landscape must have stirred memories in Elizabeth Bishop. Her voyages are in her poetry. Her ticket stubs are images, torn apart and repaired."

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