94 Poetry for Students
Many writers would write without fanfare or ex-
pectation; perhaps many of readers consider writ-
ing as something one does for one’s self. But the
narrator of “Dear Reader” understands that putting
words on a page in some way makes the act public
because the poems can now be found and read, if
not published. This narrator is trying to be present
with the reader, so that perhaps the crafting of a
poem makes a little more sense. In some ways, this
is a paradoxical position, given that surrealist im-
ages, such as a burning snowflake, are designed to
bend perceptions of reality, not straighten them out.
“Dear Reader” ends with mention of the moon,
the cliched muse of poets throughout the centuries.
The narrator says that he or she is “half eaten” by
it. The muse has taken its toll; writing is a chore.
This is the answer to the critic who assumes that
poetry must be a precious, sentimental, formal, and
easily accessible thing. As surrealism goes, Tate’s
is strong because it actually confronts the very peo-
ple upon whom poems depend most: the readers.
Tate ends the poem, leaving the narrator in the po-
sition of diligently writing despite the frustrations
of trying to reach someone else with the work.
Rather than feeling detached from poetry by the
clever turns and odd images that appear, the reader
is challenged in “Dear Reader” to sympathize with
the poet, to work a little harder and entertain the
possibilities of what could happen when one is will-
ing to participate in the exchange.
Source:Sean Robisch, in an essay for Poetry for Students,
Gale, 2001.Cliff Saunders
Cliff Saunders teaches writing and literature
in the Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, area and has
published six chapbooks of poetry. In the follow-
ing essay, Saunders asserts that “Dear Reader” is
a surrealistic poem that probes two key concerns
of author James Tate at the time of its writing: his
ambivalent feelings toward his readership and
Americans’ complacency and obsession with su-
perficial materialism.Perhaps more than any other poem inThe
Oblivion Ha-Ha(1970), “Dear Reader” lays bare
the conflicting feelings that James Tate had toward
his readership at a crucial time in his career. Actu-
ally, Tate had found himself grappling with this
dilemma ever since his first book, The Lost Pilot,
won the Yale Younger Series of Poets award in
1966 and thrust him into the national poetry lime-
light at the tender age of 23. In an interview con-
ducted by Lou Papineau and myself in the early1970’s and included as part of a larger interview
published in American Poetry Observed(Univer-
sity of Illinois Press, 1984), Tate went into con-
siderable depth about this issue. Asked whether any
pressures had been placed on him by the Yale
award, Tate responded that for the first time as a
writer of poetry, he had to consider the possibility
of an audience, and although he mused that this
was probably a “phony” (i.e., foolhardy) consider-
ation, he admitted undergoing a struggle with the
concept of reader expectation in the wake of his
impressive early success.
Other poems in The Oblivion Ha-Ha,such as
“Shadowboxing,” deal on some level with Tate’s
love-hate feelings toward the reader, but none does
so more overtly than “Dear Reader.” It is right there
in the title, of course, for without it, the “you” ad-
dressed in the poem could be interpreted in any
number of ways, such as a lover or even the poet’s
own “second self.” So Tate wastes no time in defin-
ing the battleground, so to speak. Of course, the
unassuming reader encountering the poem for the
first time is likely to be surprised, if not outright
shocked, that a poet would have the gall to come
right out and say I kind of hate you,and those read-
ers unaware of Tate’s proclivity for biting irony
might just toss the book aside. Until the publica-
tion of “Dear Reader,” no poet had come nearly as
close to facing in print the dilemma of readership
as directly as Tate had. Such bold, risk-taking
moves are sure to alienate a number of readers, and
truth be told, Tate got raked over the coals a bit by
critics for The Oblivion Ha-Ha,which is surely a
more bitingly ironic and caustically intoned col-
lection than The Lost Pilot.As noted by Chris Strof-
folino in his entry on Tate for the Dictionary of Lit-
erary Biography, Oblivion“was almost universally
panned for lacking the restraint” ofThe Lost Pilot.
Looking back, however, Tate’s second collection
seems a seminal one, and in poems like “Dear
Reader,” one can see Tate taking off the “kid
gloves” and adopting a “take-no-prisoners” stance
that encompasses not only his struggle with soci-
ety’s penchant for the conventional and superficial
but also his mixed feelings about poetry’s reader-
ship. The rules of engagement that had guided him
so well in The Lost Pilotwere no longer adequate
for a time when “everything” (not just the social
status quo and America’s involvement in the Viet-
nam War) had to be questioned, including one’s
modus operandi for writing poetry in the first place.
And so, in fearless fashion, Tate forged ahead
in The Oblivion Ha-Ha,viewing no ground too sa-
cred for investigation, least of all the impliedDear Reader