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“The Map” is fist published in 1935 in Trial Balance under the recommendation of Marianne Moore. It is the fist poem in North & South , Elizabeth Bishop's first poem collection that published in 1949. According to Bishop, “ My first poem in my first book was inspired when I was sitting on the floor, on New Year's Eve in Greenwich Village , after I graduated from college. I was staring at a map. The poem wrote itself” (qtd. in Goldenshon 101). It is New Year Eve in 1934 that Bishop found the attractions of maps and mapping. As the matter of fact, Bishop gets herself involved in attempts to find locations geographically, mentally, and physically through her life.
As the first poem in Bishop's fist poem collection, “The Map” is like an introduction not only to her, but also to her poetry. It is considered as one of Bishop's mature poems. Bishop wrote “The Map” in 1943, the same year when she met Moore . She was a senior student in Vassar College and at the same time a potential poet. Moore indeed gave her many advices and helped her revise her poems. However, Bishop is never Moore 's faithful follower. As David Kalstone mentions in Becoming A Poet: Elizabeth Bishop with Marinne Moore and Robert Lowell , “The Map” is the first poem that “was recognizable her own voice” (Kalstone 40). It is mature because it is Bishop's first poem completely in her own style. It presents characteristics of Bishop's poetics, such as detail observations, descriptive style, ambiguous images, and lasting senses of loss. |
