The sentiments aired by the speaker reflect Boey’s own experiences growing up and living in Singapore. As a Singaporean, Boey had the chance to experience the scene before the urbanization and developments in the late twentieth century. He left Singapore a few years after it became one of the fastest-growing cities with modern layouts and technology. The poet is renowned for addressing the topic of displacement in his works and “The Planners” is no exception. As such, through the speaker, he highlights the sense of alienation that he felt with the relentless modernization and degradation of the natural world.
The first stanza introduces the reader to the architecture of the unnamed city that emulates most modern cityscapes. It focuses on the obsession with functionality and efficiency that strips the nature and cultural identity of the geographical area. The modern scene lacks the humanity that is usually found in the imperfection of the natural world. In the second stanza, the speaker goes on to use dental terminology to refer to the process of urbanization. The flaws of the past are wiped clean and polished along the edges stealing away the essence of the city. The use of the terms hypnosis, anesthesia, and amnesia aims to illustrate the state of mind that people adopt over time. The speaker expounds this in the third stanza by asserting the lack of soul in urban progress and architecture. The new view of the country hardly evokes any emotion for him that poetry might get lost in the new world.
It is a free-verse poem comprising of three stanzas each with a different number of lines. It is written organically with no calculated schemes as an extended metaphor to its themes. The structure and tone are both sarcastic as a means of mocking the precision and calculations of modern planners.
