The Planners Poem Analysis

In these two poems, Cheng expresses worries about the way people neglect the importance of the environment and how the progress of industrialization is insuppressible, not even nature is spared. “Report to Wordsworth” is a negative view on mankind’s harm to nature, the causes and results of pollution; it was written with a tone of desperation and Cheng’s attempt to seek help from Wordsworth to inform him about the problem with the world today. “The Planners” highlights the importance of preserving the past while describing the unstoppable power of development and industrialization. The poem is longing for natural spaces, not corruption by cement and buildings. It reveals how our past is continually being forgotten and easily replaced in our
Humans needs fossil fuels to keep our futuristic world running, and so we must drill through the ocean floor to reach these fuel; this emphasizes that it only becomes a benefit to man at the cost of Mother Nature. The poet juxtaposes what is happening in the present with the word “fossils”. Fossils are treasures that connect us to the past and the fact that we are drilling right through them destroys our past; the idea that progress has destroyed our relation to the past because we only look to the future.

The sentence “But my heart would not bleed poetry.” conveys that idea that in this perfect world, there is no place for poetry, something which is very dear to Cheng’s heart. The idea of blood is link in the lexical chain of words such as “flaws” and “blemishes”, all these things are what makes life real and honest. A world that is deceptive and artificial isn’t a world worth living in. This allows the reader to feel a sense of empathy and concern for the
In this sentence, “the flowers are mute and the birds are few in the sky” referring to the loss of beauty and of musicality in the surrounding world meaning something has changed. The poet gives nature human characteristics so that we can empathize with them more easily, and perhaps make us realize that development always has a cost to the environment, regardless if we are aware of it. The flowers are personified by the word ‘mute’, as if they were force to keep silent with no freedom to protest. The deaths of the birds are compared to a dying clock: “slowing like a dying clock”. The clock symbolizes how the time that passed can’t be retained and turned back. The effect is of a drastic ending to nature and the reader will be more and more concerned because as more time passes, we get closer and closer to the inevitable