From The Hunting of the Snark by Lewis Carroll

...
He had brought a large map representing the sea,
Without the least vestige of land:
And the crew were much pleased when they found it to be
A map they could all understand.

"What's the good of Mercator's North Poles and Equators,
Tropics, Zones, and Meridian Lines?"
So the Bellman would cry: and the crew would reply,
"They are merely conventional signs!

"Other maps are such shapes with their islands and capes!
But we've got our brave Captain to thank"
(So the crew would protest) "that he's bought us the best--
A perfect and absolute blank!"
...

A perfect and absolute blank would be far more accurate and preferable to the results of the hand-drawn map assignment (above, left, click to enlarge if compelled) which, despite appearances, did in fact take longer to conjure up than oh, say, the time I'm anticipating spending on my dissertation and subsequent 500-page book with heavily annotated footnotes.

Comments

[Misha Griffith]

Thank you for the poem, although I do like some marks on my maps. I found the color pencils quite frustrating. I never got as far as color in my drawing classes. I am much more at home with charcoal. And I am a really good sculptor. But pencils never do what I ask. It took me four separate steps of redrawing to get my final product. And I even had a light table at my disposal. Although taping the master to the living room window works well too.