WE AREN'T ONE'S to suggest a type of artist and his art without delivering on it, so today's poem is about a mapmaker and how he feels about cartography.

Not only are the images of exotic locations mentioned cool enough to make you want to pack your bags and book a flight immediately, but the modern twist to a fairly ancient art is something that definitely strikes you when you read the poem.

“The mapmaker on his art” is a truly interesting take on an ancient art form, and Howard Nemerov — a former poet laureate of the United States — captures the irony in mapmaking quite effectively.

“THE MAPMAKER ON HIS ART”
by Howard Nemerov

After the bronzed, heroic traveler
Returns to the television interview
And cocktails at the Ritz, I in my turn
Set forth across the clean, uncharted paper.
Smiling a little at his encounters with
Savages, bugs, and snakes, for the most part
Skipping his night thoughts, philosophic notes,
Rainy reflexions, I translate his trip
Into my native tongue of bearings, shapes,
Directions, distances. My fluent pen
Wanders and cranks as his great river does,
Over the page, making the lonely voyage
Common and human. This my modest art
Brings wilderness well down into the range
Of any budget; under the haunted mountain
Where he lay in delirium, deserted
By his safari, they will build hotels
In a year or two. I make no claim that this
Much matters (they will name a hotel for him
And none for me), but lest the comparison
Make me appear a trifle colorless,
I write the running river a rich blue
And – let imaginations rage! – wild green
The jungles with their tawny meadows and swamps
Where, till the day I die, I will not go.

Check out more of Howard Nemerov's poems here.