Week 7 Reading Response
This week’s readings were an interesting compilation of maps, texts, and stories. What struck me most was found in Denis Wood’s Everything Sings, when he describes how all maps have a narrative. I have always been fascinated by maps, but more of the traditional cartography and it is interesting to think about how before mass production of maps and the internet, each map was hand drawn and a small piece of the cartographer was imprinted there. To read a map as a poem is to interpret each symbol as a part of a larger collective narrative. This reminded of how it felt to watch the video of The House That Crack Built. Each time the narrator flipped the page; a new piece of information was added to the story that made it more and more sad and elaborate. It felt similar to the second reading of Wood where each map had to be decoded as part of a larger story. For instance, the telephone lines that were called squirrel highways placed the map as a part of two narratives, one human and one animal. But perhaps my favorite line from Wood was when he describes how “a reference map may have a subject, it cannot have a point” in his delineation of maps and poems. This clearly defines how to think of a map as a narrative; if you think of the reasoning behind the creation of the map, then you can begin to understand the story that it is trying to tell.
Emily Moos
