The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion is a collection of poetry that tells a story in much the same way as a novel. It begins with a poem called "Groundation," a reference to a Jamaican holiday resulting from an event in 1966, when “His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie" visited Jamaica and was welcomed by scores of Rastafarians. After this invocation, Miller writes a couple more introductory poems, the next two of which wonderfully encapsulate the main two worldviews held by the main characters, the cartographer and the rastaman. The poem "The Shrug of Jah" speaks about the effortless beauty and naturally laid-back attitude of the universe, evoking the rastaman's contented, unambitious philosophy even through its form, which is filled with blank spaces and is itself a large-scale chiasm. The following poem, "Establishing the Metre," gives the perspective of the cartographer: it is a poetic account of two men (identified in the endnotes as Pierre Méchain and Jean-Baptiste Delambre) travelling the world to map it and gain a measurement of its rhythms.
After a couple more poems, the main characters of the book are introduced. The cartographer introduces and explains himself, saying that his job is:
“to untangle the tangled,
to unworry the concerned,
to guide you out from cul-de-sacs
into which you may have wrongly turned.”
The rastaman then responds and disagrees, arguing that the job of the cartographer is simply:
“to make visible
all them things that shoulda never exist in the first place
like the conquest of pirates, like borders,
like the viral spread of governments.”
This is the main difference between their philosophies: both characters see the natural world as a map of human history, but the cartographer sees this map as a good thing, clarifying and guiding people, while the rastaman says it is just a reminder of the terrible elements of the world, and the truly worthwhile destination isn't on the earth, it's in the heart. The cartographer argues that he is doing no such thing because he is approaching mapmaking scientifically and objectively, but the rastaman insists that mapmaking will only describe part of reality, the smaller and less significant part.
In the rest of the collection, there are several poems that are composed in a specific format: the name of a place in Jamaica, and the story behind that place. Rather than giving geographical details, however, the descriptions are historical and anthropological, reinforcing the idea that there are many different ways to know a place, and that a location is a rich well of ideas and culture.
Through the remaining poems, it becomes evident that both the cartographer and the rastaman have partially correct views of reality, but the cartographer begins to change his view to align with that of the rastaman as his attempts to find "Zion" (Heaven, in Jamaican culture) on the physical world are unsuccessful. The book closes with the rastaman explaining that Zion isn't a tangible place, but a state of the heart and reality achieved in part on this temporary earth by dwelling in "heartbless" and "upfullness," states of contented virtue that bring satisfaction in life.
