Carta Marina: A Poem in Three Parts
Only two copies exist of the Carta Marina, a sixteenth-century map drawn by Swedish historian Olaus Magnus in the ornate style of the time, with monsters cavorting in the seas around Sweden and nearby lands and islands. Mapping the territory is the dominating metaphor of this intimate poetic narrative, and the territory mapped—the powerful sexuality of women in midlife and its complex relationship to loss—is, while familiar to its inhabitants, as unknown to Western literature as Scandinavia was to the centers of medieval power. Using a variety of poetic forms, from found-poems in the language of Olaus Magnus to prose poems to expansive free verse, Fisher-Wirth creates the story of the return of a long-lost lover and the attendant reclamation of anguished memories to map the timelessness of love despite encroaching mortality. The wintry landscapes of Scandinavia ironically reflect the cultural expectation of an aging woman’s cool wisdom, but the poet shows instead that love’s heat warms and even burns at any age. A breakthrough book from a significant poet. --Patricia Monaghan