Volume 10 91
each other as naturally and as contentiously as do
the members of any family. The familial relation-
ship is arbitrary and inescapable, and it is one that
both produces resentment and generates excep-
tional devotion. In “Poem to Some of my Recent
Poems,” published in 1983, Tate calls his works of
art “My beloved little billiard balls, / my polite
mongrels, edible patriotic plums _” (Selected Po-
ems). Tate’s poems are contradictions unto them-
selves, as they are meant to be played with, trained,
and consumed, all at once. More than this, his po-
ems are his children, and their mother is a beauti-
ful firelog who, as he tells his offspring, “scorched
you with her radiance.”
In “Poem to Some of my Recent Poems,” as
in “Dear Reader,” fire is central to the experience
of poetry, indicating both poetry’s power and its
potential danger. Tate pays tribute to the mother of
his “recent poems,” announcing that “I shall never
forget / her sputtering embers, and then the little
mound.” The poet wistfully recalls the past and the
flame that, in giving his poem life, also guaranteed
its own demise. He assures his children, “you are
beautiful, and I, a slave to a heap of cinders.” Fire
is a symbol of the creation and appreciation of
beauty, and, as such, both phenomena are neces-
sarily fleeting.
The image of death with which “Poem to Some
of my Recent Poems” ends supplies the starting
point for “Dear Reader”: “I am trying to pry open
your casket / with this burning snowflake.” The
poet’s first words reveal the paradoxes involved in
this art. They intimate that poetry can revivify the
reader with its flames; in other words, the opening
lines suggest that fire, instead of destroying some-
thing, can renew it. These first words also signal
the hazards—and perhaps even the impossibility—
of successful poetry: after all, poetry is an endeavor
that is similar to that of burning a snowflake. The
fact that the reader is dead further complicates the
poet’s project, and confirms the difficulty of his
task. Tate says that “What we want from poetry is
to be moved, to be moved from where we now
stand. We don’t just want to have our ideas or emo-
tions confirmed” (The Best American Poetry 1997).
In “Dear Reader” this task of moving the reader is
literalized: for only when the reader is removed
from his casket and returns to life can the real work
of poetry begin.
In this poem, the creative moment seems to be
in the future rather than in the past, and therefore
the poet expresses a measured hope for his en-
counter with the reader: “we can rub our hands /
together, maybe / start a little fire / with our iden-
tification papers.” Yet, even if the poem reveals ex-
pectation for an event that is still to come, it also
testifies that the present is marred by discord. The
reference to “identification papers” seems to locate
the poet and reader in wartime and link their meet-
ing with each other to destruction as much as to
creation. Furthermore, the poem ends with an im-
age of incompletion, as the poet goes about his task
“half hating you, / half eaten by the moon.”
The poet remarks that he is “half eaten by the
moon,” which may be the same “black moon” of
“Shadowboxing,” another poem included in The
Oblivion Ha-Ha.The latter poem ends with a con-
frontation between a universal “you” (who is a
proxy for the poet) and an unnamed figure who
perhaps represents life or God or conscience or
even art. This figure asks, “How come you always
want to be / something else, how come you never
take your life seriously?” The poet, speaking for
“you,” responds, “Shut up! Isn’t it enough / I say
I love you, I give you everything!” In the final
stanza, the poet recounts a scene in which “you”
confronts a higher power: “He comes closer. Come
close, you say. / He comes closer. Then.Whack!
And / you start again, moving around and around
/ the room, the room which grows larger / and
larger, darker and darker. The black moon.” Here
Tate illustrates that it is both futile and inevitable
to fight against that for which we are destined. The
person identified as “you” expresses love for some-
one (or something) while at the same time throw-
ing punches at that person or thing. Likewise, in
“Dear Reader,” Tate dramatizes the way in which
the poet contradicts himself as he both entreats and
resists his reader.
“Dear Reader” is one of the last poems to ap-
pear in The Oblivion Ha-Ha. Tate might have
placed this poem first in the book, in which case it
would have served as an invitation to participateDear ReaderAnd yet ... it is this
method of composing
exclusively for himself that
makes it worthwhile for
others to read his poetry.”