The Planners

By: Catalina Grosso and Luna Pérez Muñiz

They plan. They build. All spaces are gridded,filled with permutations of possibilities.The buildings are in alignment with the roadswhich meet at desired pointslinked by bridges all hangin the grace of mathematics.They build and will not stop.Even the sea draws backand the skies surrender.

They erase the flaws,the blemishes of the past,knock off useless blocks with dental dexterity.All gaps are plugged with gleaming gold.The country wears perfect rows of shining teeth.Anesthesia, amnesia, hypnosis.They have the means.They have it all so it will not hurt,so history is new again. The piling will not stop.The drilling goes right through the fossils of last century.

But my heart would not bleedpoetry. Not a single dropto stain the blueprintof our past’s tomorrow.

Themes

The themes of this poem are:• Reducing the quality of the future. “They build and

will not stop” This means that as they keep building, the nature will pass to take a second place.

• Progress is destroying nature as well as history. This is seen in the poem when is says “Even the sea draws back and the sky surrenders” This personification explains that they are building and nature is afraid, so it surrenders.

• Art resists. The author says in the second stanza “the blemishes of the past, knock off” the blemishes must be history and art. So art resists.

Tones

The tone changes throughout the poem.

• Angry because the planners are destroying culture as well as nature.

• Sad because the planners don´t care.

• Pessimistic because he believes in a negative future.

• Negative because it has just began.

Literary Term used

The writer through the poem uses some literary terms to call your attention.• Personification “the sea draws back and the sky

surrenders”. Nature is afraid so it steps back as the cities keep growing.

• Enjambment “The buildings are in alignment with the roads which meet at desired points linked by bridges all hang in the grace of mathematics” it has enjambment so it calls your attention

• Metaphor “The country wears perfect rows of shining teeth” it means that they are all equal, as teeth.

View of the Writer

Boey Kim Cheng is against modernization and he wants to keep nature safe. But what he doesn´t like most, is that the planners´ society think that they can destroy art and culture.

He lived in Singapore but he moved to Australia because Singapore left behind art. He wrote this poem based on this.

Final Message

The writer is trying to tell us that modern cities someway are going to destroy nature and maybe nature takes revenge by natural disasters.

In our point of view, we would like to keep nature safe for our sons and grandsons, etc…

The City Planners

Analysis

Cruising these residential Sundaystreets in dry August sunlight:what offends us isthe sanities:the houses in pedantic rows, the plantedsanitary trees, assertlevelness of surface like a rebuketo the dent in our car door.No shouting here, orshatter of glass; nothing more abruptthan the rational whine of a power mowercutting a straight swath in the discouraged grass.

But though the driveways neatlysidestep hysteriaby being even, the roofs all displaythe same slant of avoidance to the hot sky,certain things:the smell of spilled oil a faintsickness lingering in the garages,a splash of paint on brick surprising as a bruise,a plastic hose poised in a viciouscoil; even the too-fixed stare of the wide windows

give momentary access tothe landscape behind or underthe future cracks in the plaster

when the houses, capsized, will slideobliquely into the clay seas, gradual as glaciersthat right now nobody notices.

That is where the City Plannerswith the insane faces of political conspiratorsare scattered over unsurveyterritories, concealed from each other,each in his own private blizzard;

guessing directions, they sketchtransitory lines rigid as wooden borderson a wall in the white vanishing air

tracing the panic of suburborder in a bland madness of snows

Themes

• False/plastic beauty of modern cities. Because cities are hidden by perfection but that perfection isn´t as good as colors or originality. “the roofs all displayed the same slant of avoidance”.

• Blizzards. Every planner is “in his own private blizzard”. The city planners don´t care about anything they only want perfect cities.

Tones

• Depressed. Because the cities are very depressing as they are all the same color and everything.

• Mad. Because being the same isn´t sane. Originality is what cities need.

• Angry. Because this is very unoriginal.

• Remorseful. Because everyone stays quiet and the city planners can´t be stopped.

Literary Terms Used

• Enjambment. There are stanzas and lines which don´t have dots so capital letters became important and call your attention.

• Alliteration. When there is alliteration you have to pay a lot of attention because it is something important. In this case, it is that imperfect things are being enumerated.

“The smell of spilled oil a faintsickness lingering in the garages,a splash of paint on brick surprising as a bruise,a plastic hose poised in a viciouscoil; even the too-fixed stare of the wide windows”.

View of the Writer

Margaret Atwood wants to describe in this poem the modernization and false beauty of modern cities. She thinks that politicians are in their own problems trying to make the cities more modern and they are leaving behind nature and history. The city that Margaret describes is so perfect that a simple blemish is prominent over the perfect background.

Final Message

For us the final message is that new cities try to be perfect and the planners don´t care about anything.