A Small Needful Fact

The title is so enmeshed with the beginning of the poem that the opening lines need the title for syntactic completion. The first line, “Is that Eric Garner worked” (Line 1), doesn’t make sense by itself—but with the title in front of it, the first line makes perfect sense:

“A Small Needful Fact”

Is that Eric Garner worked

for some time for the Parks and Rec.

Horticultural Department […] (Lines 1-3)

This is called a “spilling title” because the title spills over and into the first line of the poem. The two are inseparable. Moreover, the title is just as connected to the rest of the poem because the entire poem is a single sentence that begins with the first word of the title and ends with the period at the end of the last line.

The title sets up an enmeshed and “spilling” effect that is further perpetuated by the use of enjambment. In poetry, when a sentence or phrase runs over one line and onto the next without terminal punctuation, this is known as enjambment. The opposite of enjambment is an end-stopped line where the line is a complete unit ending with terminal punctuation. The first and second lines of “A Small Needful Fact” are enjambed, as are five more lines in this short poem (Lines 6, 9, 10, 13, and 14).