Scribd
Upload
4K views2 pages

The City Planners

The poem describes a planned suburban neighborhood on a Sunday afternoon that appears orderly and uniform on the surface but hints at underlying imperfections and instability. The houses are arranged in straight rows with sanitized landscaping, but small defects like oil stains or paint splatters suggest imperfect control. Beneath the planned appearance, the foundations will eventually fail and the neighborhoods will gradually revert to nature. The poem criticizes political leaders as "conspirators" who impose rigid plans yet fail to account for inherent flaws that will ultimately lead to downfall.

Uploaded by

Maitrey Telang
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
4K views2 pages

The City Planners

The poem describes a planned suburban neighborhood on a Sunday afternoon that appears orderly and uniform on the surface but hints at underlying imperfections and instability. The houses are arranged in straight rows with sanitized landscaping, but small defects like oil stains or paint splatters suggest imperfect control. Beneath the planned appearance, the foundations will eventually fail and the neighborhoods will gradually revert to nature. The poem criticizes political leaders as "conspirators" who impose rigid plans yet fail to account for inherent flaws that will ultimately lead to downfall.

Uploaded by

Maitrey Telang
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 2

The City Planners – Margret Atwood

Cruising these residential Sunday


streets in dry August sunlight:
what offends us is excessively concerned
the sanities: with minor details or
rules; overscrupulous.
the houses in pedantic rows, the planted
sanitary trees, assert
levelness of surface like a rebuke
to the dent in our car door.
No shouting here, or
shatter of glass; nothing more abrupt
than the rational whine of a power mower
cutting a straight swath in the discouraged grass.

But though the driveways neatly


sidestep hysteria
by being even, the roofs all display
the same slant of avoidance to the hot sky,
certain things:
the smell of spilled 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

give momentary access to


the landscape behind or under
the future cracks in the plaster

when the houses, capsized, will slide


obliquely into the clay seas, gradual as glaciers
that right now nobody notices.

That is where the City Planners


with the insane faces of political conspirators
are scattered over unsurvey
territories, concealed from each other,
each in his own private blizzard;

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
City Planners Analysis:
In the first stanza of the poem, the writer sets a very nostalgic atmosphere; talking about how a
Sunday (which is a weekend) and a bright and dry August day would make up for a pleasant
experience. Furthermore, Atwood contradicts herself where she, compares the strict and formal
design of her neighborhood to the atmosphere in the first stanza. Implicating that there is no room for
creativity.
In the second stanza, the writer looks at the world by a different perspective. She describes the world
as trying to be a perfectionist, having perfectly programmed systems. Regardless of how hard we try,
there are some imperfections, which tend to surprise her on how they are so conveniently excused.
She also widely describes the human nature of not being concentrated where there is always some
kind of materialistic interest in the background.
Surprisingly enough, the third stanza only consists of three lines. Atwood continues by stating that
beneath what seems like utmost perfection, there are always small yet significant, unfilled bits and
pieces, hidden from the naked eye.
The fourth stanza carries forward the third stanza’s ideology, referring that those same ting bits and
pieces play a major role in a system’s eventual collapse.
In the fifth stanza, we are brought back to reality, where she directly blames political conspirators
who make chaos for their own peace, intern stating that they are willing to shift mountains if it is to
aid them by any means.
The sixth stanza is where she expresses pity on the impeccable efforts of surveyors who try so hard
to keep something so vulnerable from falling apart.
The seventh and final stanza only consist of two lines where she suggests that this the cycle of
change; as time proceeds each and every familiar system becomes outdated and obsolete. Humans
just dump it and start over again, funnily enough hoping for a different result.

You might also like