The Bonsai

Bonsai all(prenominal) that I turn in I fold over erst And once over again And keep in a box Or a slit in a empty post Or in my shoe. All that I jazz? Why, yes, but for the split turn And for all time, both. Something that folds and keeps easy, give-and-takes cross off or tonics single gaudy tie, A roto picture of a young queen, A blue Indian shawl, flat A bills broadside. Its utter sublimation A feat, this core groups control Moment to hour To get over all love d profess To a cupped affords surface, Till seashells be broken pieces From immortals own bright teeth. And life and love ar objective Things you pile run and non-living hand overTo the merest child. Edith L. Tiempo * * * A basic rendition of Edith L. Tiempos signature give-and-takeg is a tad confounding, for the first lady of Filipino poesy in slope deploys the centripetal-centrifugal-centripetal (or inward- bulge outward-inward) communicate in expressing her profoundest thoughts and deepest feelings about love. The epithet itself, Bonsai, is a pungency misleading, since now here else in the poem ar there any hike references to plant life or the antediluvian Japanese technique of cultivating plaything channelizes or shrubs through dwarfing by selective pruning.Some cogency til now argue that Origami is the better title choice, for at least the per boyas act of folding objects is a bit analogous to the Japanese art of study folding to take hold complicated shapes. nonwithstanding this ref will prove at the end of this essay that Bonsai is the close to give up title for the poem, whateverthing that is non quite frank to most people after their perfunctory appraisal of this often misread literary masterpiece. However, despite the false lead, even a cursory perusal of the poem reveals to the excellent and sensible reader that Bonsai is about love, if to a great extent(prenominal)over because the quatern-letter word is menti atomic number 53d in all four stanzas.In the first stanza, the persona declargons that she folds everything that she loves and keeps them hidden in secret places a box,/ Or a slit in a drudge post,/ Or in my shoe. // What then be the things she considers imperative enough to keep? At first glance, the catalogue of her earnest objects in the sec stanza appears to be disparate, unre noveld, almost random, if non completely aleatory. alone since a literary sorceress alike Tiempo seldom commits mistakes in conjury appropriate images, then there must(prenominal) a be reason for singling out these particular items and not early(a)s.The more all important(predicate) query therefore is this What do Sons note or Dads one gaudy tie,/ A rotoi picture of a young queen,/ A blue Indian shawl, even/ A money bill. // sh argon in vulgar? Besides cosmos foldable and gum olibanum easy to keep, they must symbolize for the lovely young-bearing(prenominal) persona important individuals and incidents in her life . For as the semiotician Roland Barthes correctly observes in A Lovers cover Every object touched by the loved beings dead body becomes part of that body, and the subject eagerly attaches himself to it. ii If we are to assume that the speaking voice of Bonsai tight resembles the poets own, then the first iii objects must represent members of her immediate family son Maldon husband Edilberto (It is a well-known position among writing fellows and panelists of the Silliman Writers Workshop that Edith fondly called the late fictionist and literary critic Dad, small-arm being addressed by her husband as Mom, which is a common practice among Filipino couples. and daughter Rowena (Unknown to many, the current Program executive director of the Iowa Writers Workshop is a former superior of the Miss Negros Oriental beauty rivalry sometime in the 1970s, another exponent of the Filipino flavor of the poem, since the Philippines is a pageant-obsessed trine World country. ). The refere nts of the stand up two items are more covert and thereby more difficult to decipher. At best, we can merely speculate on the persons and/or events that make the two things significant blue Indian shawl (Ediths engagement date with Edilberto, her first winter in Iowa, her last megabucksslope in Denver? money bill (Her initial salary from Silliman University, cash intrude from the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature? ). In the long run though the indeterminateness of the allusions does not existently matter, for the opaqueness of the symbols leads not to generic obscurity and obfuscation, but to individualised mythology and mystery. Perhaps part of the poems message is that the things a person considers unforgettable and therefore valuable most other people might think of as debris, detritus or dirt. Note that the adverb even modifying money bill is used to picture something unexpected or unusual, which in the mise en scene of the poem seems to suggest that a money bill is not a schematic object to collect and treasure even by the most artificial of persons. ) assist it to say that all five objects, which are outwardly ordinary and nondescript, acquire associative significations because they serve for the poetical persona as conduits of recall, like mementoes, souvenirs and keepsakes.Interestingly, the second stanza commences with what appears to be a rhetorical question (All that I love? ), which the persona manages with a problem Why, yes, but for the moment / And for all time, both. The significance of these seemingly self- contradictory lines will be discussed towards the end of this essay, but for now this reader will focus on the point that the persona pauses to contemplate on the relevant issue of the scope of her love, before she production to enumerate her loved ones memorabilia that she has decided to vouchsafe.Love for the female persona therefore is a certified choice, a cognitive act not only an affective one, a stem that recurs in various degrees in most of her other love poems. In the ternary stanza, the persona explains the rationale behind her implement Its utter sublimation A feat, this hearts control Moment to moment To scale all love muckle To a cupped hands size, The keyword here is sublimation, which in psychology is the deflection of intimate energy or other throwback(prenominal) biological impulse from its immediate remnant to one of a higher social, moralistic or aesthetic nature or use.In chemistry, on the other hand, sublimation is the affect of transforming a solid substance by enkindle into a vapor, which on cooling condenses again to solid form without apparent liquefaction. subjective in both definitions is the act of tad and purification through fire, since to sublimate in a common sense is to make something high-flown out of something sordid. In the latter a literal fire dissolves through a crucible the dross from the precious metal, while in the former it i s furnace of the mind that ruin away the superfluous from the crucial experiences.The second most important opinion in this stanza is the procedure of scaling love down, which Tiempo asserts is a feat by itself, an exceptional attainment of the female personas sentimental heart which is achieved through utmost athletic field and restraint. But aside from mere manageability, why is it required to miniaturize love, to whittle it down to the size of a cupped hand? The answer to this pertinent question is given, albeit in a tangential fashion, in the fourth and last stanza And life and love are real/ Things you can run and/ Breathless hand over/ To the merest child. Love as real things or concrete objects rather than as abstract concepts is easier to pass on, since it has become more tangible and thus more intelligible to most everyone else, including children and ones beloved offspring. It also underscores the importance of bequeathing the legacy of love to the next generation, s ince as the cliche goes children are the future of the world, which makes the merest child, and not the wisest woman nor the strongest man, the elevated recipient of such a tremendous gift.The image of the cupped hand also emphasizes the idea that in the act of giving the one offering the bequest is also a beggar of sorts, since the beneficiary can eternally refuse to accept the heirlooms being proffered. But another important element is introduced in the ultimate stanza, for the persona by some extraordinary leap of the imagination perceives the seashells on the beach as broken pieces/ From Gods own bright teeth, which for a better understanding of Bonsai must be elaborated on, so that readers of Philippine poetry from English can fully calculate the tight structural organization of the poem.Gemino H. Abad in his remarkable essay Mapping Our poetic Terrain Filipino Poetry in English from 1905 to the Presentiiiconnects this image to the paradoxical lines of the second stanza for the moment / And for all time, both. This reader cannot attend to but agree, since indeed the five objects mentioned by the persona being mementoes of the people she loves are metonyms of memory, shattered but shimmering fragments of chronology, captured important moments immortalized in the heart and mind, if we are to visualize clock itself as a manifestation of God.Of greater consequence, thought, is that this divine figure completes Tiempos poetic picture about love and recall by adding the spiritual detail, for love like the unmentionable Hebrew name of the all-powerful is also a Tetragrammaton, a four-letter word, which has credibly engendered the often-quoted adage that God is Love, and Love is God. structurally speaking, her most famous poem can thus be diagrammed in this demeanor TREE/SHRUB - bonsai LOVE - sons note, Dads one gaudy tie, etc.GOD seashells spell/WOMAN merest child On the left field side of the chart are the enormous objects, concepts or people ful l-size vegetation (Tree/Shrub), big abstract words (Love, God) and grownups (Man/Woman). Their miniature analogues, in contrast, are found on the right side of the chart. However, these diminutive parallels, oddly the mementoes, retain the spirit of their larger versions, since the process of sublimation reduces things only in terms of size but not in essence.Ultimately, this makes Bonsai the unadulterated title of the poem, for a bonsai has all the necessary parts that make a tree or a shrub what it is roots, a trunk, branches, leaves and flowers, albeit in smaller portions in the same manner that love even if sublimated by the heart and the mind equable preserves its sum and substance, its lifeblood in the truest sense of the written word and the word make flesh.