| Cartography and Walking is a collection of poems that has been written from the perspective of a consciously constructed poetic epistemology. All of the poems, diverse in their subject concerns and varying in their free-verse forms, are integral to the same poetic framework. In these compositions the imagination functions as an argument and creates a "cartographic" manner of understanding. Cartography, in its scientific circumstances, involves an interactive relationship between the map-maker and the map-user that results in the translation of an intellectual reality. Similarly, what is known in the poems is generated by an imaginative response and creative interpretation on the part of the reader to artistic features in the work. The role of stylistic and structural elements such as metaphor, simile, rhyme, and rhythm create a system of representation and debate, a complex that involves the reader in mapping a landscape of knowing. Furthermore, what poetry knows in the collection is contingent upon style and structure and their effectiveness, through more formal constructions, to elicit belief in the methodology of the poems. |
