"Map to the Stars"

9 February 2018:

"Map to the Stars" is one of my favorite poems that I've come across in the last five years or so. From the second I heard it (on a Poetry magazine podcast), I was floored by it and I knew I wanted to teach it in my ENGL 301 class, specifically as we talked about Marxist literary theory. It just works so well. (Incidentally, I met the poet at the National Book Festival and told him that. He signed my book, writing "Here's to all the underlying politics in everything we do.")

We talked about the poem today in my two sections of 301 and the students continue to respond so well--and so intelligently to it. This is no easy feat as it is a tough poem, if not to understand, at least to talk about. But they did it. They have smart things to say about what the poem does with space, motion, symbolism, and above all, that sense of moving through a space, both absorbed in it yet trying to transcend it.