Geography III

Geography III examines the physical and mental mapping of the world through nine rigorously constructed poems. Bishop observes specific objects and landscapes, such as a filling station, a family waiting room, and a coastal town, to document the tension between domesticity and travel. The collection utilizes the framework of a nineteenth-century school textbook to ask what constitutes a home and how individuals orient themselves in time. She describes the interior of a bus, the contents of a cluttered desk, and the loss of cities and continents to illustrate the process of memory and cartography.

This book is for readers who value technical precision and the descriptive accuracy of the physical world. It serves those interested in the intersections of geography and personal identity. Readers take away a vocabulary for mourning and a method for viewing mundane environments with detached clarity. The collection provides a model for how to look at an object until its larger context becomes visible, offering a perspective on how distance and proximity shape one's understanding of self.