The Body Is a Map

From the Middle Ages into the Renaissance, European culture believed the heart was not merely a physical organ but in every way the center of the human being. The heart held a significant and central place in understanding and integrating human emotions, thoughts, recognitions, and even identity—of self in relation to community.
Popular from the 16th into the 17th century—the Age of Exploration and Discovery—heart-shaped, or cardiform, maps were rooted in the works of second-century geographer, Ptolemy. Such maps attempted to integrate the makers’ European beliefs with the discoveries made in the Americas, often obscuring the violence of their confrontations there (and everywhere).
In the hands of the great poets of the age, heart-shaped maps provided metaphors to express their own explorations and attempted integrations of body, mind, and soul.
The English poet John Donne often employs heart-shaped map metaphors in his explorations of love—moving, for instance, in “The Good Morrow,” from body-centered, sensual love to spiritual union—from eros to agape. In his “Hymn to God My God, in My Sickness,” Donne invokes cordiform maps again. He speaks of lying on his sickbed, readying to meet God, writing, “my physicians by their love are grown Cosmographers, and I their map, who lie Flat on this bed.”
Because the poems in this volume progress from surreal, disjointed, often bizarre encounters and visions of creation to resolution and union with another human being, creation, and the divine, I chose to use one of the popular Renaissance heart-shaped maps for the book cover. The axis upon which my world turns is, like theirs, the Judeo-Christian tradition of the West, especially as located in 17th century British poetry, reaching into the English Romantic poets William Blake and William Wordsworth, as well as back into Chaucer and medieval English literature.
These poems discover that this archetypal journey is also my own. I do not, however, embrace anything with rigid adherence to dogma or doctrine. To do so is to wreck violence upon the self and others—exactly what white Europeans often did, both to their own and other cultures. Christian tradition has overall, and at best, been syncretistic, incorporating wisdom from explorations in many realms—geographical, literary, spiritual, historical and philosophical. For me, this tendency is natural and has been reinforced both by my voracious quest for learning and many mystical experiences that began early in my life.
—Thomas Ramey Watson, Foreword

Those familiar with the poet’s work know that he often shares his encounters in other realms, most notably through visions and communications with those no longer in earthly bodies—humans and other animals. As a symphony evokes various emotions and thoughts in the listener, the movements of the poet’s collection of short and finally cohesive poems, weave together a rich and vibrant tapestry of emotion and thought. The fearless explorations evoked by his poetic music, sometimes discordant and shocking, ultimately soothing, reveal truths that we sometimes see, yet choose to ignore. And navigate us, as the heart maps of the Renaissance attempt, toward spiritual understanding and growth.
—Paul Anacki, poet
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As a result of a vision in December 2025, I have made two music albums from the lyrics of this book (same title). They are available on Amazon, Spotify, Apple, Deezer, YouTube, etc. Please check them out. They add more dimensions and depth to the experience of reading alone.