A Small Needful Fact Essay Questions

What role does breath play in "A Small Needful Fact?"

Breath is an integral unit of poetry; it creates the sounds that are communicated as poems and gives shape to the pauses and rests between words. Poetry has a strongly oral and aural history, given that it comes from traditions of song and ritual recitation. "A Small Needful Fact" is composed of one long sentence, but pauses for breath are given through the use of commas and hedging phrases. In other words, the speaker's uncertainty creates the space for breath. Given the nature of the poem's context, breath becomes political.

The poem is about Eric Garner, a man who died deprived of breath when a police officer placed him in a chokehold. His last words, "I can't breathe," became a rallying cry for the Black Lives Matter movement in protest of police brutality and racism. Garner was not the first person to die in police custody after uttering this terrifying phrase.

Breath, then, is the basic unit of both poetry and life. Gay explores how our environment connects us as a collective: the plants that Garner likely placed in the ground while working for the Parks and Recreation Horticultural Department help us all breathe a little easier. This tragic irony implies a responsibility on the part of the reader to understand the privilege of breathing freely.

How does understatement appear in the poem? What role does it serve?

The title itself understates the fact the poem is based on by making it "small." The fact is that Eric Garner, a forty-three-year-old African American man whose life was brutally cut short after an encounter with police, once worked for the New York Parks and Recreation Horticultural Department. Later, the use of hedging phrases ("perhaps," "in all likelihood," and "most likely") understates the poet's speculations by tinging them with uncertainty.

The use of understatement humanizes Garner by retrieving his memory from the public's idea of his violent death and from him existing only as a symbol. Even if the symbol of Garner's death helped spark a national movement demanding change, it erases the complex humanity of the man's life. Without becoming too biographical and personal, Gay focuses on Garner's life in a way that does not attempt to place him on the pedestal of sainthood.

What kind of ecology does Gay portray in the poem?

Ecology is all about relationships: how organisms relate to one another and to their environment. In the poem, Gay stays out of the realm of metaphor to state a fact: that Garner worked for some time for the New York Parks and Recreation Horticultural Department. This portrays Garner as a regular working man who had a job that affected both people and the environment. That he likely used his "very large hands" to gently place plants in the earth indicates the peacemaking skills that his community has spoken about (Smith 2020).

From the fact of where Garner once worked, Gay makes stepping stones of speculation. Some of the plants that Garner once cared for likely "continue to grow" and "do what such plants do" (Lines 9-10). According to Gay, it is an inherent aspect of a plant's existence to "house and feed small and necessary creatures," be "pleasant to touch and smell," "[convert] sunlight into food," and "[make] it easier for us to breathe" (Lines 10-15). Gay's use of present continuous tense in these lines (changed in the above description to present tense) highlights Garner's absence from the world as the plants he placed into the ground continue to grow. Absence communicated through descriptions of growth heightens the poem's irony.

If the reader is aware of the context of Garner's death, then the irony is clear. The plants that Garner once cared for likely make it easier for us to breathe in the present day. This underlines the ecology that Gay creates in the poem: the air we breathe connects us to a man who died deprived of breath.