One of my coworkers is a poet. Last week we assigned each other an assignment: to write a poem to be workshopped by the assigner on Monday. My assignment was to “write a muscular poem about masculinity.”
Cartography
A man is an old map
charted in sharp lines and lies;
where north is up and west is left
where puff-cheeked faces blow and fume
where grim Atlas crouches at the bottom;
bearing up his legend – the half-truth map
where mountains have no height
where water is not wet
and past its paper edges
there be monsters.
What follows is the text of the email I sent to her about what I was aiming for with this poem.
i don’t know if this is ‘muscular’ or not, since i’ve only heard that used in your mouth, but i tried for my own feeling of solidity.
Feel more than free to workshop or comment on this as much as possible. And give me your own assignments if you want. I feel that, at this stage, I write better when I’ve been assigned something.
v.2
Cartography
A Man is like an old map charted
in sharp lines; a plotted thing —
where north is up and west is left
where puff-cheek faces blow and fume
where Atlas bears his legend — a land
where mountains have no height
where water is not wet
and past its paper edges
there be monsters.
you are right B?rd to think that the last line is stylistically different. it is a paraphrase/reference to the big uncharted spaces of old maps where the only thing written is ‘Here Be Monsters’ and it is supposed to tie in with the puns on Atlas and legend and the compass points and all that.
Also, it makes me think that the uncharted areas of a man’s soul, the parts masculinity knows nothing about, might very well be monstrous in their very undefined nature.
or something.
i’m actually most concerned with the middle chunk, i don’t think it is quite as strong. the Atlas line in particular needs me again. i think.