Honoring a Life
What most people know about Eric Garner is the way in which he died. Though these facts have ignited important debates and protests, Gay's poem suggests that Garner's legacy includes more than just the violence that killed him. The impact of "A Small Needful Fact" relies on the reader knowing about Garner and his death, but it does not once mention that death. This context is alluded to by the line about Garner's plants making it easier for all of us to breathe. Death is only evoked by the mention of breath.
In his poetry, Gay is a careful analyst of the way that Black people are construed in media, art, and everyday life. He is not interested in flattening Black experiences by only portraying them in the light of violence. This poem honors Garner's life without attempting to sanctify him.
Nature and Connection
Nature plays an important role in many of Gay's poems. Here, Gay relies on the fact that Garner worked for some time for the Parks and Recreation Horticultural Department (in charge of maintenance and planting tasks, including bed preparation, mulching, weeding, pruning, planting, plant removing, deadheading, raking, chemical applying, and watering). From there, the poet suggests how Garner's work continues to impact all of us. The plants that Garner most likely put in the ground continue to "house / and feed small and necessary creatures," be "pleasant to touch and smell," convert "sunlight into food," and—most significantly—make the air easier for us to breathe (Lines 10-15).
That the work of this man who was killed in the past continues to touch "us" (those alive in the present) by making the air easier to breathe draws an organic line between past and present, life and death. This poem is not composed of the exuberant and ecstatic language that Gay often uses. Instead, the biological process of plants expressed through hedging and somewhat flat language serves to connect the reader's life to Garner's.
Breath
As Greek poet Giorgos Seferis said, "Poetry has its roots in human breath." Exhalations turn into speech, and the voice carries messages. All the pauses and silences inherent in speech and poetry are also significant. Here, Gay's poem functions with breath in multiple ways. "A Small Needful Fact" is about a man who was deprived of air, but whose work in all likelihood makes it easier for us all to breathe. Garner's last words, "I can't breathe," became a rallying cry for an entire movement advocating for Americans to confront racism and the actions of the state (particularly law enforcement) against Black Americans.
The poem's use of hedging phrases and commas creates necessary pauses that make the final lines—"like making it easier / for us to breathe"—feel so impactful. By creating pauses, the poem in fact asks the reader to take breaths. If the reader is aware of the poem's context, then this act of breathing becomes politically resonant.
