A Small Needful Fact

While “A Small Needful Fact” is not a traditional elegy, it borrows and reinvents significant tropes from the English elegiac tradition. An elegy is a poem of mourning written on the occasion of a death. “A Small Needful Fact” expresses sorrow over the death of Eric Garner, who sowed plants into the soil, “making it easier / for us to breathe” (Lines 14-15). The poem only focuses on one “small” fact about Garner’s life, but the implication is that there are many other positive ways—both small and large—Garner contributed to society, thus his loss is tragic.

Most early elegies written in English name their subject somewhere in the poem (for example, in the title, the inscription, or the lines of the poem itself), and “A Small Needful Fact” names Garner on the first line: “Is that Eric Garner worked” (Line 1).

Also, traditional English elegies take place in a pastoral setting. While Garner lived and died in New York City, the poem’s focus on Garner’s work—planting for the Parks Department—creates an imagined pastoral setting.

Spring is an important time in a traditional elegy because the springtime renewal of flora suggests continuance after death. Elegy scholar Peter Sacks writes, there is “immortality suggested by nature’s self-regenerative power” (Sack, Peter.