Volume 10 95
covenant between poet and reader based on certain
assumptions of how “the game” should be played.
At a time when a new generation was attempting
to tear down the status quo, Tate was trying to strip
away any veneer that might stand in the way of his
quest to shock the reader into a fuller, deeper
awareness of life’s possibilities. For Tate, a primary
concern was that people were so locked into an en-
trenched system of conventional thought and su-
perficial values that anything less than a direct
frontal assault would be insufficient. Paul Chris-
tensen addresses this central concern quite cogently
in his article on Tate forCritical Survey of Poetry,
in which he points out that “[t]he central theme run-
ning throughout Tate’s canon is the desire to shat-
ter superficial experience, to break through the
sterility of suburban life ...” Indeed, in “Dear
Reader,” the implication in the poem’s first line, “I
am trying to pry open your casket,” is that the
reader is dead—if not literally, then at least figu-
ratively. Tate sees the reader as someone “boxed
in,” and though this reader may feel safe within the
confines of a secure haven, Tate suggests that this
attitude represents a kind of death for the reader.
Moreover, he implies that it is the poet’s mission
to revitalize and even resurrect the reader from a
death of the spirit brought on by bourgeois mate-
rialism. This task, though, may be an impossible
one, for W. H. Auden may have been right when
he said in his profound elegy “In Memory of
W. B. Yeats” that “poetry makes nothing happen”?
Is the task of prying open the reader’s “casket” an
impossible one if you are using a “burning
snowflake” to perform the operation?
The burning snowflake initially strikes one as
maddeningly paradoxical and irrational. How can
a snowflake burn, let alone be held in order to pry
open a casket? It cannot, of course, in any rational
sense, but its powerfully symbolic suggestiveness
cannot be dismissed. Aside from implying that the
job of awakening the reader from a deathlike state
may be doomed from the start, Tate may be using
the burning snowflake as an indication of his mixed
feelings toward the reader. The snowflake could
mean that the prospect of having to awaken the
reader from a figurative death leaves him “cold,”
yet a passionate need to at least attempt such a
daunting task “burns” within him, so much so that
it enables him to overcome the “chilly” prospect of
any such foray into the private world of the reader.
It is this insular world with which Tate ulti-
mately is concerned, the personal worlds that peo-
ple protect and will seemingly do anything to main-
tain a safe, orderly existence. Yet it is this private
place within everybody, this storehouse of subcon-
scious energy, that manifests in dreams and in the
irrational that Tate wants to penetrate. It is there, as
many poets believe, where the real living is taking
place, not in the mundane world of job sites, su-
permarkets, gas stations, and the like. This quest
constitutes a kind of prime directive for the surre-
alist writer. Like many of the European and Latin
surrealists who had preceded him, Tate was very
much involved with the odd juxtapositions and in-
congruous combinations of words and dreamlike
images that mark surrealism around the time when
The Oblivion Ha-Hawas published. In Line 3 of
“Dear Reader,” Tate boldly proposes making what
can only be seen as the surrealist’s ultimate sacri-
fice: “I’ll give up my sleep for you.” This line em-
phasizes Tate’s need and determination to make a
connection with the reader. The bridge to the reader
is a slippery one because Tate’s journey toward the
reader is being compromised by “[t]his freezing rain
[that] keeps falling down,” blinding him (“I can
barely see”) and thus compromising his attempt to
reach the reader. The “freezing rain,” which can be
seen as a type of static gumming up the lines of
communication between Tate and his readership, re-
inforces the references to cold and numbness (that
is, “casket” and “snowflake”) in the first stanza.
Is Tate implying that there is a “big chill” in
the public imagination that he is having a hard time
negotiating? The poem would seem to support such
an interpretation, especially in Lines 6-9, where
Tate suggests that if contact between poet and
reader can be made, then a spark can ignite and
spread like wildfire through the public imagination.
He muses that perhaps this spark can be stoked if
his readers would just contribute their “identifica-
tion papers” to a community fire. Here is another
image packed with possible associations. On the
one hand, the image draws parallels to a very realDear ReaderThe rules of
engagement that had
guided him so well ... were
no longer adequate for a
time when “everything” ...
had to be questioned, ...”