A Small Needful Fact

The title is so enmeshed with the beginning of the poem that the opening lines need the title for syntactic completion. The first line, “Is that Eric Garner worked” (Line 1), doesn’t make sense by itself—but with the title in front of it, the first line makes perfect sense:

“A Small Needful Fact”

Is that Eric Garner worked

for some time for the Parks and Rec.

Horticultural Department […] (Lines 1-3)

This is called a “spilling title” because the title spills over and into the first line of the poem. The two are inseparable. Moreover, the title is just as connected to the rest of the poem because the entire poem is a single sentence that begins with the first word of the title and ends with the period at the end of the last line.

The title sets up an enmeshed and “spilling” effect that is further perpetuated by the use of enjambment. In poetry, when a sentence or phrase runs over one line and onto the next without terminal punctuation, this is known as enjambment. The opposite of enjambment is an end-stopped line where the line is a complete unit ending with terminal punctuation. The first and second lines of “A Small Needful Fact” are enjambed, as are five more lines in this short poem (Lines 6, 9, 10, 13, and 14). A total of seven enjambed lines are in the 15-line poem— approximately half of the poem. (For more on the poem’s use of enjambment, see the guide’s Symbol/Motif section.) The spilling title and enjambment throughout entwine the lines of this single-sentence poem. It's as if the title is the seed from which the rest of the poem sprouts.

Growing from the title is a tension between two competing truths. First, Garner’s life was much bigger than the unjust circumstances of his death. The poem focuses on one “small” fact about Garner’s life, but the implication is that there are many more facts about Garner’s life—large and small—that the circumstances of Garner’s death eclipse. Second, it is very difficult to think or write about Garner without thinking and writing about the fact of his murder by a police officer. These two ideas are in constant tension throughout “A Small Needful Fact.”

Lines 4-8 emphasize that there are many details about Garner’s life that are unknown:

perhaps, that with his very large hands,

perhaps, in all likelihood,

he put gently into the earth

some plants which, most likely,

some of them, in all likelihood (Lines 4-8),

These five lines are characterized by the repeated qualifying diction. The qualifying words “perhaps” (Lines 4, 5), “in all likelihood” (Lines 5, 8), “some” (Line 7, 8), and “most likely” (Line 7) emphasize that Garner’s specific personhood, while crucial to honor, remains a mystery. It’s very likely Garner planted many things while he worked for the Parks Department, but these facts remain obscure, and the speaker, while willing to imagine Garner’s life, is loath to presume.

The only line among Lines 4-8 that does not include any qualifying words is: “he put gently into earth” (Line 6). On a literal level, this line describes Garner planting, but it also evokes Garner’s death. After his murder, Garner was buried in Rosedale Cemetery (Schapiro, Richard and Thomas Tracy. “Eric Garner’s Unmarked Grave in New Jersey Cemetery Goes Largely Unnoticed.” New York Daily News, 13 July 2015). Like the plants that “A Small Needful Fact” imagines Garner sowing into the soil, Garner was put to rest in the earth.

The remaining lines of the poem imagine that the plants Garner planted

continue to grow, continue

to do what such plants do, like house

and feed small and necessary creatures,

like being pleasant to the touch and smell,

like converting sunlight

into food, like making it easier

for us to breathe (Lines 9-15).

Like the lines before, these lines emphasize that Garner’s contributions to the world are bigger than the circumstances of his death—those contributions include these plants. Also like the preceding lines, these lines recall Garner’s death. On a literal level, Lines 13-15 describe photosynthesis, the process by which plants turn sunlight into oxygen and make the air more breathable for human beings. However, like Line 6, these lines also evoke Garner’s death: A police officer choked Garner to death, and Garner’s final words, “I can’t breathe,” became a rallying cry for the Black Lives Matter movement.

Just as the title is entwined with the 15 lines that follow it, these two central, competing ideas—that Garner was more than the circumstances of his death, and it is extremely difficult to remember Garner without thinking about the unjust way he was killed—are entwined throughout the poem.