Welcome back to the Daily Poem here in the Close Reeds Podcast Network. I'm David Kern, and today is

February 11th, 2020. Yesterday, I read a poem by Elizabeth Bishop called The Moose in recognition

or remembrance of her birthday, which is February 8th, and so was last Saturday. The Moose was one of

her later career poems, written, I believe, in the 70s.

But, you know, Elizabeth Bishop is an important enough poet and a beloved enough poet among many

people that I thought I would read another poem by her, but this time an early poem. If, you know,

if the death of William Butler Yates is a good occasion to read

multiple Yates poems or Frost's death is an occasion to read multiple Frost poems, then it seems to me

that Elizabeth Bishop's birthday is a good occasion to listen to a couple of her poems. So this poem

is called The Map, and it's actually the, believe the first poem that shows up in her book, North and South, which came from 1946.

As I mentioned yesterday, she lived from 1911 to 1979, so in 1946 she would have been 35 years old, give or take, I guess, depending when the book came out.

But you can see here why, by the time she was in her 40s, she was already the consultant

and poet to the Library of Congress.

This is the kind of poem that shows her early talent, and this is how it goes.

The map.

Land lies in water.

It is shadowed green.

Shadows, or are they shallows at its edge,

showing the line of long seaweed ledges where weeds hang to the simple blue from green?

Or does the land lean down to lift the sea from under, drawing it unperturbed around itself?

Along the fine, tan, sandy shelf is the land tugging at the sea from under?

The shadow of Newfoundland lies flat and still. Labrador is yellow where

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