“Surveys, Maps, and Mothers: M” is part of a series of poems using surveying and cartographer terminology in an attempt to catalogue messy memories across a family landscape of tragedy and trauma. The use of self-imposed form constraints within the glossary style of the poem adds to the difficulty of digesting and sharing memory, and the way that any memory (good or bad) can be made clearer when the speaker is forced to examine it through these poetic constraints. 

Maggie Wolff is a poet, essayist, fiction writer, and Ph.D. student in English Studies. She recently won an AWP Intro Journal Award for her poetry, and her work has appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Juked, New Delta Review, and other publications. She is the author of a chapbook, Haunted Daughters (Press 254).