The title of Elizabeth Bishop's Geography III is a vexing one, to be sure. There is, quite frankly, no concise or clear-cut answer as to why Bishop chose this ambiguous title. The final book written and published by Bishop before her death in 1979, Geography III is a collection of nine poems that can be tied to the tranquility and votility of mankind's surroundings (its "geography," so to speak) and its effects on Bishop and her various guises. As a treastise of the bonds we share, however personal or impersonal, with the earth, Geography III is a fitting swan song for Bishop. So...why the Roman numeral III of the title? Is the third time the charm, with geography?
The clues (or are they?) can be found everywhere: the prefacing "First Lessons in Geography" defines maps, asks of volcanoes, and sets the tone for the following poems ("Geography I," perhaps?), as well as her painstakingly detailed landscapes of "Crusoe in England" ("islands spawning islands, / like frogs' eggs turning into polliwogs / of islands") and "Poem":
Up closer, a wild iris, white and yellow,
fresh-squiggled from the tube.
The air is fresh and cold; cold early spring
clear as gray glass; a half inch of blue sky
below the steel-gray storm clouds.
Regardless of the mystery surrounding its title, Geography III is still a very strong collection of nine peerless works of poetry. Anyone who could fashion a work as profound in its simplicity as "The Moose" or elegaic in its nostalgia as "In the Waiting Room" deserves a Pulitzer Prize, and Elizabeth Bishop won that very award in 1956.
It is, perhaps, only fitting that we to this day ponder the title of Geography III. I am sure Elizabeth Bishop would have like it that way.
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