Speaker or Narrator, and Point of View
The unidentified speaker hedgingly makes connections between Eric Garner's past work with the Parks and Recreation Horticultural Department and the collective in the present.
Form and Meter
The fifteen lines of the poem are written in a single stanza with no delineated meter or rhyme scheme.
Metaphors and Similes
Alliteration and Assonance
Consonance:
-"Parks and Rec." (Line): The hard "c" sound repeats.
-"small and necessary creatures" (Line 11): The "s" sound repeats.
-"pleasant to touch" (Line 12): The "t" sound repeats.
Assonance:
-"perhaps, that with his very large hands" (Line 4): The "a" sound repeats.
Irony
There is irony in the fact that Eric Garner, who was killed when a police officer placed him in a chokehold, once worked at a job that required him to care for plants that, most likely to this day, help us all breathe.
Genre
Political Poetry, Elegy
Setting
The setting is unspecified, however the speaker describes the earth in which Garner placed the plants that continue to grow to this day.
Tone
Hesitating, Uncomfortable, Hopeful
Protagonist and Antagonist
The protagonist is Eric Garner. The antagonist is the systemic racism that led to his death at the hands of police.
Major Conflict
The major conflict of the poem is that Garner's life was cut short by a chokehold placed on him by a law enforcement officer. This alludes to the systemic racism that pervades society and kills people of color (particularly Black Americans) due to issues like police brutality.
Climax
The list of what plants do, described with the anaphora "like," gathers steam until the final climax of the poem: "like making it easier / for us to breathe" (Line 15).
Foreshadowing
When the speaker mentions that Garner's plants likely continue to grow, this foreshadows (to a reader who is knowledgable about the context in which Garner died, deprived of breath) that they continue to provide the air we breathe.
Understatement
The use of hedging phrases and the insistence on a "small" needful fact create an understatement.
Allusions
The use of the word "needful" in the title, and the poem's focus on breath, allude to Robert Hayden's poem "Frederick Douglass," where freedom is "needful to man as air" (Line 2).
