Reading Edith Tiempo’s ‘Bonsai’
In the 23rd December 1972 issue of Focus Philippines Magazine — the Christmas issue of a publication that was only a month old and which sprang right in the aftermath of the declaration of Martial Law in the country — a new poem by Edith Lopez Tiempo appeared.
This was “Bonsai,” and the piece would go on to become one of the most anthologized poems by the soon-to-be National Artist for Literature. It is rightly celebrated today for its stark imagery, its personal details, its exquisite craft, its well-earned insight, and its sheer power. I also would like to contend that the poem demonstrates a remarkable shift in sensibility for a writer previously known for pieces that were rigid exemplars of formalism in poetry … cerebral and often daunting.
In this essay, I would like to dive deep into the meaning of “Bonsai” and provide some context for its making.
When Edith Tiempo graduated from Silliman University in Dumaguete in 1947 with a BSE degree in English, she was part of the wave of people who thronged to complete their interrupted education because of the Japanese Occupation of the country during World War II. She was already writing poetry by then, writing very much in the Romantic tradition that Filipino poets in English gravitated to in that period of Philippine history, and admitted awareness of Filipino female poets like Angela Manalang-Gloria and Trinidad Tarrosa-Subido. But when she got accepted into the Iowa Writers Workshop in the same year, together with her husband Edilberto Tiempo, her notions of what made poetry were challenged. And it was then that she was introduced to the tenets of New Criticism which was popular in the American writing landscape at that time. It was a painful transition for her but soon grew to master the formalist discipline, although she would later admit:
“It was necessary for the writing, but I found that it robbed me of other things as a person. Inevitably it does. It’s not just a matter of using it for your writing. It gets to you as a person.”
This ambivalence would come to play when she would finally pen “Bonsai” more than 20 years later.
In the meantime, after graduating from Iowa in 1949, she would go on to make a name for herself in both fiction and poetry, and was included in the 1954 anthology Six Filipino Poets, edited by Leonard Casper. In 1960, her poems would be published by the prestigious Poetry Magazine in Chicago, and in 1964, she would publish her first book, a collection of her short fiction titled Abide Joshua and Other Stories.
In this period of prolific writing, she also began crafting poems in an exercise of what she called … “a passionate patience,” with work that gunned for the intellectual, something which she noted as being in affinity with the works of Elizabeth Jennings. This phase in her poetry would culminate in her publication in 1966 of her first poetry collection, The Tracks of Babylon and Other Poems, published by Swallow Press in Denver, Colorado. The book would collect only 20 of her poems, which included another much-anthologised piece, “Lament for the Littlest Fellow,” first published in the Sands and Coral in 1950. These works were crafted in the most exquisite demands of New Criticism, and the collection won her the Palanca Award for Poetry in 1967.
She would publish two novels in the late 1970s, but would only sporadically publish her poetry in magazines and journals during that time, which would eventually lead to her hiatus from writing in the 1980s, perhaps beset by the horrors of Martial Law and most definitely impeded by administrative problems at Silliman University where she was teaching with her husband. “Bonsai” would become one of those rare pieces she would send out to the world during this turbulent period of her life. She would finally collect all the poems from this period — including “Bonsai” — into her second collection, The Charmer’s Box and Other Poems, published by the Dela Salle University Press in 1993. What immediately sets them apart from the poems in her first collection is their personal feel and accessibility to emotional details, and a looseness in tone and construction that you could say signals a defiance against the tenets of New Criticism.
Let’s take a look at “Bonsai” in that regard, and read it in increasing order of complexity… Let’s read:
All that I love
I fold over once
And once again
And keep in a box
Or a slit in a hollow post
Or in my shoe.
All that I love?
Why, yes, but for the moment —
And for all time, both.
Something that folds and keeps easy,
Son’s note or Dad’s one gaudy tie,
A roto picture of a beauty queen,
A blue Indian shawl, even
A money bill.
It’s utter sublimation,
A feat, this heart’s control
Moment to moment
To scale all love down
To a cupped hand’s size,
Till seashells are broken pieces
From God’s own bright teeth,
And life and love are real
Things you can run and
Breathless hand over
To the merest child.
Now let’s try to read deeper into the poem…
It’s helpful to begin offhand with the title and the central image — although this is not necessary. A central image is the image given by the poem that is pervasive throughout, becoming the engine of meaning in the long run. In this case the title and the central image are the same: the bonsai. One must take note however that the literal bonsai is only found in the title, but the resonance of it — you can say its spirit — is everywhere else in the poem.
What is a bonsai? A bonsai is an ornamental tree or shrub grown in a pot and artificially prevented from reaching its normal size. So we can have a bonsai acacia or a bonsai narra — all very easy to keep because of their small size in a pot. And they are real trees, not fake trees — but their smallness make them pocket representations of their full-sized cousins. In doing the process of bonsai with trees, and in keeping them in pots, they become living mementos of the larger trees in the outside world which of course we cannot keep.
What I like about “Bonsai” is how it makes our interpretations of it relatively easy to do because the four stanzas of the poem seem ready-made to be interpreted variously via the literal level, the metaphorical level, and the metaphysical level.
It’s always good to start with the literal level. Going over the first stanza of the poem again, we read…
All that I love
I fold over once
And once again
And keep in a box
Or a slit in a hollow post
Or in my shoe.
Take note of that first line: “All that I love.”
What do you love and cherish the most in your life? When I ask people this question, they give various answers: family … friends … God … travel … food … pets… The things that we love are very precious to us. They occupy a large place in our lives, and in our hearts.
Take note of the next two lines: “I fold over once / And once again.”
All that you love … that can be folded? This does not seem to make logical sense: this something that you love, in the poem, which can be folded twice over. You love your family. Can you fold your family? The answer is no. You love your friends. Can you fold your friends? The answer is no. You love God. Can you fold God? The answer is also no. You love travel. Can you fold travel? The answer is also no. You love food. Can you fold food? The answer is sometimes, well … yes. You love your pets. Can you fold your pets? The answer is again no.
So what does folding all that you love twice over mean? It’s a paradox, and we will get our answer very soon…
Let’s go to the next lines: “And keep in a box / Or a slit in a hollow post / Or in my shoe.”
The answer to our befuddlement becomes gradually clear. You realize that in our lives, we have storage paraphernalia to keep precious personal mementos in: a shoebox … a jewelry box … a bamboo pole … a trunk … or a scrapbook.
And what do we keep in these storage paraphernalia? Letters, jewellery, photos, old clothes, your wedding gown, your precious linen, postcards, and various souvenirs from all your travel…
The second stanza underlines this story: it gives us a list of things — we call this technique as “cataloguing” in poetry — that are examples of these mementos that we keep in these storage paraphernalia…
For example, your son’s note…
It’s written in crayon or pencil, and in kiddie grammar and spelling, it reads: “Dear mom, thank you so much for being my mom. If I had a different mom, I would punch her in the face and go find you.” And your reaction would be to glow and be happy and go awwww. You keep the letter which now has sentimental value for you. Maybe you will put it on the refrigerator door. After that maybe you will hide it in a shoebox or in a scrapbook…
This letter is a small memento which can be “folded once and once again, and keep in a box.” It’s just a letter, but it symbolizes something bigger — your child’s deep and innocent love for you.
Another example, your Dad’s one gaudy tie…
It’s not stylish, and looks freakish in fact. And your dad is normally a stylish man. But you gave him this tie on his birthday when you were ten years old — and your dad proceeded to wear the gaudy tie every Monday to work. And then he suddenly died because of COVID-19. And all you have left of him, aside from other unmemorable things, is this gaudy tie he wore every Monday to work because you gave it to him. Do you throw it away? No. You keep it in a box.
This gaudy tie is a small memento which can be “folded once and once again, and keep in a box.” It’s just a tie, but it symbolizes something bigger: your bond with your beloved father.
Another example, a roto picture of a beauty queen…
Let’s say you’re 90 years old, and you’re a great-grandmother. The younger members of your family only know you as an old woman, and they have no conception whatsoever of your youth, your beauty, and your vitality.
So you take out this photo from one of your albums, and you show it to your grandchildren and great-grandchildren. You tell them, holding this evidence, that you were young once. That you were known for your vitality. That your beauty made you a title holder like Miss Philippines. Do you throw this photo away? No. You keep it in a scrapbook or album.
This old picture of a beauty queen is a small memento which can be “folded once and once again, and keep in a box.” It’s just a picture, but it symbolizes something bigger: your youth, beauty, and vitality.
Another example, a blue Indian shawl…
Let’s say that during your honeymoon, your new husband — a handsome and good man — brought you over to India to see the Taj Mahal because of its romantic connotation. You loved the trip. When you visit the shops of Agra later, he bought you this blue Indian shawl, as a souvenir from your honeymoon. Later you would store this blue Indian shawl in your trunk, taking it out only once in a while for special occasions. And then he suddenly died because of COVID-19. When you go through your things days after the funeral, you find the blue Indian shawl in your trunk. It’s old. Do you throw this shawl away? No. You keep it in the trunk still, taking it out often when you go out.
This old blue Indian shawl is a small memento which can be “folded once and once again, and keep in a box.” It’s just a shawl , but it symbolizes something bigger: your late husband’s love for you.
They’re all mementos [or symbols] of bigger and more important things in our lives. Those things are too big to keep, but mementos of them are easier to keep and cherish.
With the third stanza of the poem, it’s easy to go to the deeper metaphorical level. We read…
It’s utter sublimation,
A feat, this heart’s control
Moment to moment
To scale all love down
To a cupped hand’s size…
Something “sublime” is something of such excellence, or grandeur, or beauty as to inspire great admiration or awe. But what exactly is “sublime”? According to the poem, the act of memento-keeping is actually sublime. When you keep things in boxes because these are mementos of great sentimental or personal value, that is sublime. The poem calls this act, quote unquote, “a feat.” It is an achievement that requires great courage, skill, or strength. It is exactly that because it is the human heart that drives it, “moment to moment” … “scaling down all that we love / to a cupped hand’s size,” to something small like a memento.
The small memento becomes a metaphor for the things that we love that are big. A lot of what we love are big in terms of the importance we give to them. But our mementos of them are small.
Here’s more…
Your love of travel is big. Heck, the destinations that you love — Paris! London! Tokyo! — are big. But you can scale down that love to a postcard you keep in a scrapbook!
Your love of family is big. But you can scale down that love … to a locket with the photos of your mom and dad.
Your love of friends is big. But you can scale down that love … to a photo of you and your friends you keep in a shoebox.
Your love of movies is big. But you can scale down that love … to collectible figurines of beloved movie characters that you can store in a cabinet!
We already get the theme of the poem here … the only way to understand or keep the big things in our lives is through … small things. This, by the way, is a great paradox!
The poem also offers us a metaphysical way of reading. Is there any? Let’s read the fourth stanza of the poem again…
Till seashells are broken pieces
From God’s own bright teeth,
And life and love are real
Things you can run and
Breathless hand over
To the merest child.
There’s a mention of God and seashells. God is … big. Seashells are small and easy to keep. What is the biggest thing in the world to cherish? GOD! And the poem says we can begin to understand God just by looking at the smallest thing like a seashell. It’s beauty in miniature. It’s the complexities of the universe in miniature. It’s an idea of God in miniature.
Life and love are big things, but we can understand them best through small things. And small things are so simple that the poem says you can give them to a mere child, and the child can easily comprehend even things as complex as life and love.
Thank you for watching this video essay on the poetry of Philippine National Artist for Literature Edith Lopez Tiempo. We will be dropping more videos about Philippine literature, film, and culture in the days to come, so please don’t forget to subscribe to this channel and press the notifications button. Till then, be kind!
