Formalism on the Batik Maker: My Impression
Autor: Chet Carasig • March 18, 2017 • Term Paper • 570 Words (3 Pages) • 1,567 Views
Kal-El Franco Renato R. Carasig August 14, 2015
Grade VIII – St. Joseph Ma’am Madrid
The Batik Maker: My Impression
Poems are truly personal and the author may have a very different idea when he/she wrote the poem when compared to the readers’ interpretation.
The Batik Maker
Tissue of no seam and skin
Of no scale she weaves this:
Dream of a huntsman pale
That in his antlered
Mangrove waits
Ensnared;
And I cannot touch him.
Lengths of the dumb and widths
Of the deaf are his hair
Where wild orchids thumb
Or his parted throat surprise
To elegiac screaming
Only birds of
Paradise
And I cannot wake him
Shades of the light and shapes
Of the rain on his palanquin
Stain what phantom panther
Sleeps in the cage of
His skin and immobile
Hands;
And I cannot bury him.
Upon reading the poem, I was given the impression that the main character of the poem who be the Batik Maker herself but further reading revealed that it is not the Batik Maker but the design which the Batik Maker would imprint on her creation. The poem tells about a hunting scene where the huntsman had been trapped or hurt while a panther awaits in the shadows. The poem is a suspenseful one as we do not exactly know what happens to the huntsman. The use of the repetitive words “And I cannot touch/wake/bury “further adds to the question if the hunter did in the end die.
These lines also gave me the impression that perhaps the Batik Maker is talking to herself about her creation because once the design is put on the cloth using wax, the Batik Maker will not be able to touch her work lest she ruin the candle etchings that will provide the design. After immersing the cloth in the tub for coloring, the Batik Maker must let her creation “sleep”, thus “and I cannot wake him”. But the final line “and I cannot bury him” may indicate that the Batik Maker cannot put away her creation because it is not finished yet.
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