Cartography

map.jpgOne 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.

what i’m going for is to show that mas­culin­ity is not a com­plete defin­ing con­cept for a man. like, a man is a three dimen­sional thing, but mas­culin­ity is only two dimen­sional. thus, the earth is three dimen­sional, but a map is only a two dimen­sional rep­re­sen­ta­tion of it and there­fore incom­plete. i also wanted a feel­ing of impla­ca­bil­ity and tur­moil and maybe even a dash of deter­mi­na­tion. i was also think­ing about how dan­ger­ous it can be to be male and live try­ing to be ‘mas­cu­line’ only. to not give the other dimen­sion of being a chance to assert itself. i guess this could be called the ‘fem­i­nine’ side, but i think fem­i­nin­ity holds the same dan­ger. mas­cu­line and fem­i­nine are just roles that peo­ple play, but we’re all just peo­ple in my mind.

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.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 19th, 2004 at 6:21 am and is filed under Poetry and Other Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

7 Responses to “Cartography”

  1. Bard Edlund Says:
    July 19th, 2004 at 6:45 pm

    this might be my favorite thing that you’ve writ­ten, or at least it’s up there. i like the premise a whole lot and i think you com­mu­ni­cate the premise well. i am won­der­ing about the way you phrased the very last line. it feels styl­is­ti­cally dif­fer­ent, like it’s in another lan­guage than the rest. i almost read it in a pirate’s voice (like “thar be mon­sters!”), which turns a pow­er­ful con­clu­sion into a bit of a joke… but that’s prob­a­bly just my problem.

    have you heard Elvis Costello’s “Poor Frac­tured Atlas?” it’s a beau­ti­ful song. you can read the lyrics here, but beware this site may have pop­ups and crap (no appar­ent prob­lem in fire­fox though): http://elvis-costello.lyrics-songs.com/lyrics/8707/

  2. harvey Says:
    July 19th, 2004 at 10:14 pm

    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.

  3. Bard Edlund Says:
    July 20th, 2004 at 1:45 am

    ah, i didn’t know maps actu­ally said that. in that case, great! i can see what you’re say­ing about the mid­dle part, but i have no con­struc­tive advice. per­haps it can be improved but i do think the whole thing is very good already.

    btw, i wrote some­thing sort of about maps ages ago, and your piece is at least 300% bet­ter.
    http://www.edlundart.com/poem.php?poem_id=36

  4. Bard Edlund Says:
    July 20th, 2004 at 1:55 am

    you know… maybe the 1st line could be recon­sid­ered. it seems to me you start say­ing that a man is an old map, which is tak­ing the oppo­site view of the one you hold. yet, later in the poem, start­ing with “the half-truth map,” you are argu­ing from the per­spec­tive of your view that being a man is more than what the map says. i’m con­fus­ing myself here, so i have no direct advice, but i’m think­ing you might be able to squeeze a tiny bit more clar­ity out of this by adjust­ing a word or two.

  5. Organic/Mechanic Says:
    November 4th, 2005 at 10:08 am

    […] • Break­ing Up is Hard To Do • Dervish • Haunted House [2nd ver­sion] • Smober the Sock Gob­lin • Cartography […]

  6. Adam Harvey Says:
    August 30th, 2006 at 9:48 am

    I won­der if I should add this quote to the beginning:

    “What is man? A mis­er­able lit­tle pile of secrets.“
    –Andre Malraux

  7. Organic/Mechanic Permalink » Dictum Says:
    November 10th, 2006 at 8:34 am

    […] Fri­day, 10 Novem­ber 2006 at 7:53 am. Filed under Jour­nal. RSS 2.0 feed for this post. | Track­Back URI |   ∅comments […]

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