WHEN IMAGINATION COLLIDES WITH REALITY A Reading of Serpent From The Charmer's Box by Edith Tiempo Silently, my senses begin to abandon their rationalewho is to say then what is real? The world that we live in, the reality, which we are a part of, is small and thus limited. That is why, in his infinite capacity for potential improvement, man created fantasy. Fantasy is BIG! To a certain extent it is more imaginative, more exciting, and more fun. Fantasy is like a lake where man throws all his ideas and dreams, and then he dives on in from the springboard of imagination. So, jump in to the lake. Why not? Just make sure that when you jump in to the lake you know how to get back from where you came from. Because, no matter how big a fantasy is, to the point that it somehow changes our perception of what is real and what is not, we should still be able to determine what is just a product of the imagination and what is really real. That no matter how extraordinary and cunning fantasy may be, we should still be able to distinguish one from the other, we should still be able to tell apart what is just mere fantasy and what is reality. And in Edith Tiempo's Serpemt from the Charmer's Box we are going to encounter a great deal of images, mixing imagination with reality. In the first ten lines, the poem starts it off with a picture of a sudden city that crowds into the leaves of the mango. The section of the sudden city is a product of the imagination, that by the very idea of the word "sudden," it means that it was thought of instantly and unexpectedly, something that just "popped up" into an idea. The unexpected presence of a sudden city is somewhat indicative of an illusion. And that "sudden city" that crowds into the leaves of the mango refers to the blending of the imagination and reality. The phrase leaves of the mango points to something that real and lifelike. And so, the sudden city, which is the imagination, penetrates i...
