"A Work of Artifice"
The bonsai tree
in the attractive
pot
could have grown eighty feet tall
till split by
lightning.
But a gardener
carefully pruned it.
It can nine inches
high.
Every day back the
branches
the gardener croon,
'It is your nature
to be small and
cozy,
domestic and weak;
how lucky, little
tree,
to have a pot to
grow in'.
With living creature
one must begin very early
one must begin very early
to dwarf their
growth:
the bound feet,
the crippled brain,
the hair in crulers,
the hands you
love to touch.
A Work of Artifice,” by the American poet Marge Piercy, is a small poem about a large subject. The poem describes how a bonsai tree,
The first four lines of the poem celebrate the latent potential of the tree, which might have grown to an enormous height. But then line 5 appears and reminds us that the giant tree would probably someday have been “split by lightning.” This reminder is vital, because it prevents the poem from seeming naive, sentimental, and romantic. A bonsai tree can be carefully protected from harm and may even live far longer than a tree exposed to the dangers of nature, of which lightning is only one. Yet the poem implies that existence in nature, and the development of one’s natural potential, are both more valuable than a life that is safe, controlled, and limited. Line 5 is vital because it acknowledges the potential dangers of a life without limits, but the poem accepts and even welcomes those dangers as the risks inherent in a life of freedom.
Later the poem suggests that the gardener not only limits the freedom of the tree he prunes but that he also insists that it is the tree’s “nature / to be small and cozy” (12-13). Is the gardener a deliberate liar, or is he merely deceiving himself? In either case, he is not expressing the truth: the “nature” of the tree is in fact to be anything but “small.” The gardener takes pride in shaping the tree to his own purposes, imposing his own will on it so that it conforms to his wishes. Of course, the fact that the gardener is.
Problems in understanding the poem
How grows tree in the attractive pot
tree is a natural element
it has a no limits to grown
but in this poem it just like a showcases
