A Small Needful Fact

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2015

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Form and Meter

“A Small Needful Fact” is free verse; it doesn’t follow a fixed rhyme-scheme or a fixed metrical pattern. Just because the poem is free verse, however, does not mean that it is formless. To the contrary, there are two important formal organizational features of “A Small Needful Fact.”

First, the entire poem is a single sentence, beginning with the first word of the title and ending with the period terminating the final line. This single-sentence structure embodies the continuity the poem describes: plants Garner sowed continue to grow, and Garner’s contributions to society survive his death.

Second, as one might expect from a single-sentence poem, “A Small Needful Fact” is relatively short. This brevity emphasizes that Garner’s life was cut short. It also suggests that, although the works of Garner’s hands continue, his absence is still felt. Continuity and brevity are in tension, but they do not contradict—both elements complement and underscore one another.

Enjambment

In poetry, when a sentence or phrase runs over one line and onto the next without terminal punctuation, this is called enjambment. The opposite of enjambment is an end-stopped line where the line is a complete unit that ends with terminal punctuation. The first and second lines of “A Small Needful Fact” are enjambed, but the third line is end-stopped:

Is that Eric Garner worked

for some time for the Parks and Rec.

Horticultural Department, which means (Lines 1-3),

The end of the first line leaves the thought incomplete, creating the question: Eric Garner worked where? The answer begins on the next line: “for the Parks and Rec.” (Line 2), but the answer is still unfinished until the third line: “Horticultural Department” (Line 3). Because the thought is incomplete until the beginning of Line 3, the first two lines are enjambed. The third line, however, is end-stopped, meaning it ends with a complete phrase and terminal punctuation: “which means,” (Line 3).

However, although Line 3 is end-stopped, the phrase that ends the line, “which means,” is a clause, not a complete sentence. At the end of the third line, there is still a question, Which means what? Even though Line 3 is not technically enjambed, it retains some of the effect of enjambment because the clause’s incompletion pushes the reader into the next line to understand the fact. It then takes four more lines to fully complete the meaning:

perhaps, that with his very large hands,

perhaps, in all likelihood,

he put gently into the earth

some plants […] (Lines 4-7)

Only Line 6 is technically enjambed. Lines 4 and 5 are not, technically, enjambed because they end with terminal punctuation, but lines 4-7 are all necessary for understanding the poem’s titular “small” fact: Garner likely sowed many plants into the earth. Consequently, like the third line, Lines 4 and 5 have the feeling of being enjambed. Like the single-sentence structure of the poem, the enjambment (Lines 1, 2, 6, 9, 10, 13, and 14) and the enjambed-feel of many of the lines (Lines 3, 4, 5, 7 and 8) emphasizes a sense of interconnection.

Ode

An ode is a lyric poem written in praise of a person or virtue. “A Small Needful Fact” celebrates one “small” fact about Garner’s life. An ode is typically “elaborately formal […] often in the form of a lengthy ceremonious address […] always serious and elevated in tone” (“Ode.” The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms, edited by Chris Baldick, 4th edition, Oxford University Press, 2015, p. 257). “A Small Needful Fact” is not lengthy or elaborately formal, but it conveys both celebration and gravity and is thus in conversation with the ode form.