The City Planners Flashcards
(1-2) 2
Cruising these residential Sunday
streets in dry August sunlight:
Poem begins w/ speaker ‘cruising’ a neighborhood, driving aimlessly + enjoying sun
Start suggests comfort + caml :
-residential: not busy
-August: vacation + leisure
-Sunday: weekend + church
(3-6)3+3
what offends us is
the sanities:
the houses in pedantic rows, the planted
sanitary trees
Brief tonal change
sibilance: suggests hissing at being offended
Speaker explains ‘sanities’ he finds offensive:
-pedantic = overly perfect
-planted = deliberately placed where they are
-‘sanitary trees’ = lost their wildness + nothing natural about them
(6-8) 4
Sanitary trees, assert
levelness of surface like a rebuke
to the dent in our car door.
Personification of trees and houses –> says they are actively judging speaker for being imperfect
Sibilance: sounds like disapproving hiss
assert=establish
rebuke=tell off
9-12 (3)
No shouting here, or
shatter of glass; nothing more abrupt
than the rational whine of a power mower
cutting a straight swathe in the discouraged grass.
Issue isn’t only the looks; there’s no interesting sounds to break the monotony
The one suprising sound is to keep house looking neat
–> in neighborhood every disturbance can be explained
discouraged grass = personification:
Nature here isn’t allowed to grow, but rather placed, mantained & controlled
(hence its discouragement sinc it isn’t free)
13-16
But though the driveways neatly
sidestep hysteria
by being even, the roofs all display
the same slant of avoidance to the hot sky,
But –> though homes look perfect, there’s something off putting about them
2-3.5: they think that if they look orderly enough, no messiness can creep in (sidestem = avoid)
3.5-4: roofs all slope at same angle to avoid struggles & chaos of rest of world
(Hot sky = global warming –> building these suburbs)
Sharp ‘T’ consonance: mirrors sharp borders of driveways
sibilance: mirrors sinister hush that fills the neighbourhood
17-22 (4)
certain things;
the smell of spilt oil a faint
sickness lingering in the garages,
a splash of paint on brick surprising as a bruise,
a plastic hose poised in a vicious
coil; even the too-fixed stare of the wide windows
Darkness beneath neighbourhoods pristine surface
Oil described as ‘sickness’: hints at humanity’s increasing petroleum + fossil fuel dependance
–> critiques suberbs bc = longer routes to work + large lawns which use ‘power’ mowers to keep tidy
3: slightest disruption to neighbourhood, nos only seen as ‘surpsising’, also violent
last line: despite houses being occupied, they are lifeless + seem sad & vacant, unlike houses built w/ love+ care
23-25 (1)
give momentary access to
the landscape behind or under
the future cracks in the plaster
Speaker looks at suburb’s perfection & they get glimpse into a future where houses have fallen apart
26-28 (3)
when the houses, capsized, will slide
obliquely into the clay seas, gradual as glaciers
that right now nobody notices.
Neighbourhood will slowly crumble; Houses will tumble into water bc of rising seas
last line: they feel so safe in their houses, it doesn’t occur to them to worry about the future of their planet
Slow ‘l’ consonance –> slows passage down
quick ‘n’ alliteration –> obsessive cosmetic concerns distract from issues w/ greater consequence
–> critizising tone
28-32 (3)
That is where the City Planners
with the insane faces of political conspirators
are scattered over unsurveyed
territories, concealed from each other,
each in his own private blizzard;
After these houses have fallen apart, City Planners will be looking for some new/wild land to tame into a suburb
private blizzard= suggests they can’t see clearly (not each other / the world / their work)
–> they are disconnected from reality
Concealed = hidden
guessing directions, they sketch
transitory lines rigid as wooden borders
on a wall in the white vanishing air
tracing the panic of suburb
order in a bland madness of snows.
White vanishing wall = things getting wilder (climate change) yet planners continue to act as if they can bent the environment to their will
Need for such strict control is insane
–> attempt to impose order is a form of panic = an irrational, gut-reaction to fear
Name the 2 Themes
1) Order control & madness
2) environment
Describe the theme of : order, control & maddness
Critiques humanity’s obsession w/ controlling its environment
Describe the theme of : environment (2+2)
- suburbs surface is neat + tidy –> shields people from the true cost of their crushy lives
- suburbs aren’t only a distraction, but also a part of the problem
–> they transform wild territories to vast suburbs , using up more of earth’s natural resources in the process
–> short sighted greed will result in an unstable planet
Structure
Stanzas keep getting shorter:
-reflects the way suburbs disconnect people from each other & keep everyone in their ‘sanitary’ worlds
-this disconnection is destroying the environment: people no longer work together for everyone’s benefit, only for their personal desires
Metric pattern & rhyme
None:
Fits in w/ powm’s critique of humanity’s destructive desire to ‘perfect’ its environment w/ ‘rigid’ designs
