Whew, so a combination of knowing no one's probably reading this and general business has kept me away, but I thought I'd try to get back on the train.
The first poem in Elizabeth Bishop's Collected Works is "The Map," which is this interesting frontispiece, really, because it sets up two important motifs: travel and this ever-present-post-modern chasm between signifier and signified. In this poem, it's a map. A map that is supposed to represent the islands, waters, etc. it presents but is also it's own thing, a created, artistic thing, nonetheless, and is never quite what it tries to represent. So we get this distance, which is kind of cool considering the "Distance" involved in the travel motif and in Bishop's more biographical life in which she lived mostly abroad and really had most of her interaction with other poets via correspondence.
If you're out there, chime in, disagree, agree, propose new thoughts, propose a new poem and I'll chew it up as best I can!
When caffeine and reading poetry collide...close reads of poems and other poetic/literary moments
