Ross gay a small needful fact
A Just Recompense
Planting a garden is very much imagining something that’s not there&#;. You’re putting something in the ground that is both entirely different from the thing which will arrive and entirely the same.
Ross Homosexual, interview with Kyla Marshell at Poetry Foundation
I was quite surprised to spot this poem in the table of contents. Not because it’s not a great poem – it is, it’s practically iconic – but because it was written in and has been on the database, and in the Split this Rock database, since then, not to mention analyzed, taught, and bounced all over the internet. It’s a poem people who don’t scan poetry know. But I’m fine with Pushcart letting it qualify by its inclusion on a WordPress poetry blog in (all those years they ignored online literature…). Better slow than never.
I find the poem is extraordinary because of the complexity hiding behind its beautiful simplicity. It uses what a linguistics/stylistics professor terms “title enjambment” – the title serves as the first line of the poem – to avoid the repetition that would remind us this is a construct, to flow more smoothly an expression of the mind and heart in one long sentence; that
Is that Eric Garner worked
for some time for the Parks and Rec.
Horticultural Department, which means,
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,
continue to grow, continue
to accomplish what such plants accomplish, like house
and feed compact and necessary creatures,
like creature pleasant to touch and smell,
like converting sunlight
into nourishment, like making it easier
for us to breathe.
A Miniature Needful Fact
After all the news, the facts &#; truth and untruth, it takes a poet to tenderly place such horror, such outrage into a story-image that people can digest and remember and not turn away from. As you will understand, Eric Garner was choked to death by police in New York 6 years ago; this poem was published the accompanying year. Many have been killed since but the latest murder of George Floyd, echoing Garner&#;s group of words &#;I can&#;t breathe&#;, sadly shows how little has changed.
What I appreciate about Gay&#;s approach to this almost impossible-to-talk-about subject (and impossible not to speak about), is that he speaks of the moment before, of Garner&#;s perform as
A Small Needful Fact
“A Compact Needful Fact” by Ross Gay is a single-sentence poem that begins with the titular fact: Eric Garner did some serve in the Parks and Recreation Horticultural Department. This fact is “needful,” in part, because it is largely unknown; Garner is overwhelmingly associated not with his life’s work but with his murder. Garner was an unarmed Ebony man who was accused of selling individual cigarettes without charging taxes, then choked to death by a New York Municipality police officer. Following his death in July of , Garner’s last words—“I can’t breathe”—quickly became a rallying cry for the Black Lives Matter movement. Garner was, however, much more than the tragic circumstances of his death. “A Small Needful Fact” focuses on one “small” fact about Garner’s life—that he worked for the Parks Department—but the implication is there are many other important facts about Garner that the attention on his death obscures.
As a single-sentence poem, “A Small Needful Fact” is the expression of a single, continuous thought. As a poem of only 15 short lines, it is also brief. Part ode and part elegy, the poem both celebrates Garner’s life and mourns that his life was cut shor
A Small Needful Fact
For the remainder of this week, we’ve chosen to replay The Slowdown episodes that take up questions of social justice. The outrage and heartbreak brought on by the murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and other black citizens remind us that courageous dialogue about racial prejudice is critical to the survival of our culture. And we believe that poetry is a perfect vehicle for just such dialogue.
Read an automated transcript
A Compact Needful Fact
by Ross Gay
Is that Eric Garner worked
for some time for the Parks and Rec.
Horticultural Department, which means,
perhaps, that with his very large hands,
perhaps, in all likelihood,
he lay gently into the earth
some plants which, most likely,
some of them, in all likelihood,
continue to grow, continue
to do what such plants do, like house
and feed small and necessary creatures,
like being pleasant to stroke and smell,
like converting sunlight
into food, like making it easier
for us to breathe.
“A Small Needful Fact” by Ross Gay. Copyright ©
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