suppression.

A Work of Artifice

Marge Piercy
(b. 1936)

The bonsai tree
in the attractive pot
could have grown eighty feet tall
on the side of a mountain
till split by lightning.
But a gardener
carefully pruned it.
It is nine inches high.
Every day as he
whittles back the branches
the gardener croons,
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 creatures
one must begin very early
to dwarf their growth:
the bound feet,
the crippled brain,
the hair in curlers
the hands you
love to touch.


When I read the first line of this poem, I will not lie, I laughed for quite a while. I have this long running joke with Aly Hughes about bonsai trees. Then I decided to read it for real, and I was like… dayummmm this is not funny. The author uses the tree to exemplify suppression. In particular is is about the suppression of girls in Asian countries. When this was written feet binding was a common practice to keep women from having their feet grow because small feet were considered attractive. This poem is about not conforming exactly but living up to the level that society has set for you. Women are taught from a young age what they are supposed to be and what they are supposed to look like. This poem is about starting when girls are young to suppress any thoughts other than what society wants them to think. Not only is it about suppressing those thoughts, but about replacing them with thoughts that societies pressures are right and they are happy living life like that. Now, don’t respond to this response to tell me that it is not only women who face these pressures. Men also face them. But this poem is about women, and I am a woman. Therefore I wrote it from a woman’s perspective. The End.