A Reading of Relief Map of the Philippines by Sid Cruz

The ‘Relief Map of the Philippines’, in its ingenious and tight form, contains a strong cultural and social awakening. The poem achieved a subtle way of juxtaposing the /replica of the archipelago/ with the shallowness of looking into one’s country, like how we have known our country only by its external form, and that it consists of 7,100 islands.

The use of the pronoun ‘we’ is sly. The ‘we’ could be the persona and the group of companion who visits the Rizal Park, or ‘we’, the Filipino ourselves. If it is the latter, reading the poem seems like hitting the ‘Pinoy’ without him ever knowing it, because the poem is presented in a way of giving an impression of vivid personal experience, but still, it is of interest to all since it concerns all.

Gemino Abad is correct in his essay (As Imagined as lived: Sense for Language, Sense of Country) that “one’s sense of country is more image than concept, more feeling than thought.”Like the poem, it tells us that it takes intrinsic knowledge, like how the image of people through language could define what really makes a country, beyond knowing its extrinsic form and shape. The persona hears dito becomes diri... dinhi as if it is something foreign, but the 13th line: a strange conversation calls me back, means a sense of awakening or a realization that he still in his own country. Then “I” becomes “we” in the 15th line, not giving himself an exemption, in the way of looking our country as if giving a look from above; distant, unconnected, or just like passing by as if we were birds. The true concept of the poem becomes an isometric representation of way of seeing the Philippines as country.
I think that the choice of words mean to raise association and meaning, and concerns less of the sound or rhythm because it sound closely to a travel narrative. I also wonder why out of 7100 islands the poet chooses to use Cebu twice.
The poem uses modern diction. It expresses the quintessence of the whole experience of the persona and thoughtfully, each line applies scenes and is wrought at a higher emotion by the last line of the poem.