Dear Reader by James Tate

Exploring the obsessive nature of writing poetry

I am trying to pry open your casket

with this burning snowflake.

I'll give up my sleep for you.

This freezing sleet keeps coming down

and I can barely see.

If this trick works we can rub our hands

together, maybe

start a little fire

with our idenification papers.

I don't know but I keep working, working

half hating you,

half eaten by the moon.

Hello and welcome to Words That Burn, the podcast taking a closer look at poetry. This week’s poem is Dear Reader by James Tate. It is beautifully written and simple in it’s execution. As January closes in around us, I thought that the copious amounts of winter imagery were quite fitting. It is as close to the feeling of deep winter that a poem could reach, I think.

There is a beautiful depth to this poem, which is only 13 lines long. James Tate is addressing his reader directly, whoever they might be. Most importantly, he is contacting us to share a secret. There is a quiet breath of intimacy in each and every line as he explains to us what drives him as a poet. Indeed, as the poem works its way through a blizzard, we, the reader, come to understand that it is a poem dedicated to the nature of poetry and the audience, that most mercurial of relationships. It is a testament to the difficulty of poetry, but most importantly, to the ember of joy it can kindle if the poet gets it just right.

The imagery of dear reader is all at once suspenseful and macabre. It is typical of the prowess James Tate constantly showed off in his verse. As I’ve said many times before on this podcast, today’s writer was a poet's poet—a poet who was not immediately accessible to the general public but beloved by those who’ve chosen the discipline of poetry as a lifelong pursuit. John Ashbery wrote of Tate’s work:

‘’the main event is the poet's wrestling with passing moments, frantically trying to discover the poetry there and to preserve it, perishable as it is. Tate is the poet of possibilities, of morph, of surprising consequences, lovely or disastrous, and these phenomena exist everywhere. ''  (The 2004)

The morph that Ashberry writes about can be felt in every line of this poem. Each image slides into the next with a subtlety that leaves the reader almost confused at various points. This sense of confusion is only added to by the stark juxtaposition between the images that Tate uses. For instance, in this poem, we see oxymorons like burning snowflakes. This contrast, combined with the variety of tones that the speaker uses when addressing us—sometimes sincere, sometimes mocking—amounts to a poem that leaves our heads swimming by the end.

This is, of course, Tate's intention.

He was very clear throughout his life that what he truly wanted was to move the reader through a broad swathe of emotion, both positive and negative. In an interview, he stated:

 “There is nothing better than [to move the reader deeply]. I love my funny poems, but I’d rather break your heart. And if I can do both in the same poem, that’s the best. If you laughed earlier in the poem and I brought you close to tears in the end, that’s the best."  (Poetry Foundation 2023)

The idea of accomplishing two quite contradictory goals is at the core of Tate’s poetry. He would often leverage juxtaposition to unleash the absurdity and surrealism of the everyday. Today’s poem is no different.  Dear Reader follows a simple structure: a couplet, followed by a triplet, followed by a couplet, then another triplet, finishing in a final couplet. This is not an established poetic form but rather a structure that Tate has settled on to get his point across. In this episode, I’ll take a look at each set in its own right. Starting with the first couplet:

I am trying to pry open your casket

with this burning snowflake.

Our speaker begins with a strange image: a sealed coffin. Apparently, we, the audience, are dead. May we rest in peace. This may be intended to be immediately jarring, to shake the reader a little, and to ensure that attention and concentration are given. This would be typical of Tate. The more we read of this poem, the more solid that interpretation becomes. 

The verb trying shows an effort being made by the speaker. That effort is not surprising, given that the speaker is attempting to use an oxymoron, a figure of speech that combines two seemingly contradictory elements to free us from our tomb (Hirsch 2017); this burning snowflake.

Several things are occurring in this compact metaphor. Firstly, it is no wonder that we’ve not been freed. For the task the speaker is attempting, a snowflake would be useless—much less one that is on fire. Secondly, the image establishes a theme of futility, one that we will see again throughout the poem. Futility and frustration are at the heart of this poem. The speaker is posing a question to his audience. Is poetry futile?

You may notice I’m drawing a lot of attention to the idea of the speaker in poetry, mainly because the idea of separating the poet from their poetry is a cornerstone of Tate’s work. Tate is a poet from the United States who began writing his poetry in the 1960s, right in the heart of the New York poetry scene: St. Marks Church.(Gleaves 2017)

As a natural side effect of that melting pot of ideas and literary rule-breaking, Tate’s poetry was extremely experimental, even beyond what his contemporaries like Charles Simic were writing.(Gioia n.d.) James Tate always avoided straying into the confessional form that was also popular at the time. As critic Dana Gioia wrote:

‘’As Tate’s subsequent work appeared year after year in prolific profusion, it proved completely impersonal. Perhaps in rejection of the excesses of the fashionable Confessional mode'' (Gioia n.d.)

Despite his aversion to autobiographical writing, first-person perspective dominates the stanza of three lines, but we must remember that it is not the poet himself who’s speaking.

I'll give up my sleep for you.

This freezing sleet keeps coming down

and I can barely see.

Despite the futility of their burning snowflake crowbar, the speaker is determined to rouse us, sacrificing everything at their disposal to move us: I’ll give up my sleep for you.

From this point onward, it’s helpful to view the poem in two parallel timelines: the surreal world and task of the speaker, and Tate’s own work as a poet. The speaker will not give up on us, and Tate will stay up all night to write poetry just to move us. There is a certain tongue-and-cheek quality to Tate’s sacrifice, as we get the hint that he’d be up all night writing anyway.

Desperation mounts for our speaker as the weather does not let up, and they are lost at our casket, trying desperately to revive us. There is a wallowing in self-pity from our speaker; look at all this sacrifice I’m going through for you, dear reader. Tate is underscoring the frustration of authors attempting to please or satisfy an audience. A writer or poet might do everything in their power to write well, but in the end, it still might fall on deaf ears. Or, in this case, dead ears.

In the next couplet, the true tragedy of a poet’s effort is revealed:

If this trick works we can rub our hands

together, maybe

A poet never knows if their hard work will pay off. The trick the speaker is referring to is a piece of clever literary technique, a flourish of writing, and a bolt of wit to keep us engaged. Something that will forge connections between the creator and audience. If they can pull that off, then both poet and reader may bask in some kind of warmth: we can rub our hands together, maybe

And just when we think we’re beginning to grasp what Tate is talking about he throws another curveball at us in the form of densely metaphorical imagery that feels like it’s come from nowhere:

start a little fire

with our idenification papers.

I don't know but I keep working, working

The triplet now immediately follows on from the previous lines; maybe start a little fire.  This serves to intensify the pace of the poem, that combined with the repetition of burning and warmth in the fires, slides us along and makes the new image Tate introduces all the more abrupt, so much so we almost slam into it: with our identification papers

What on earth is happening? We're snapped out of the flow of the poem by a brand new image, but why? The reason is, as you may have guessed, very intentional on Tate’s part; it is to ensure that his dead reader is still paying attention. This whiplash imagery is something the poet would employ again and again in his work. When asked about his need to do so he replied that the purpose of the technique was to : 

“Set expressions in motion against whole new meanings so that you can’t classify them as simple statements. The reader thinks that the poem is making a statement, and then all of a sudden the poem insists that the reader think about words, not about content.”(Tate 1999)  

Tate wants to force his dear readers to think, engaging with the work before them, so that his connection to us and, in turn, us to him burns all the brighter. He is not, by a long shot, the first poet to this. He follows a long, postmodern American tradition of jolting the reader to interaction, exemplified by the likes of E.E. Cummings (Cummings and Rocco 1998).

The identification papers themselves are almost a mystery, meaning-wise. My own interpretation is that, through his poetic magic, Tate is hoping to reshape his own image, or identity, in the eyes of the reader. Simultaneously, I believe he hopes that his trick will help the reader to think deeper, forging new parts of their own identity using poetry and, on a broader scale, art in general.

The speaker goes on to create a refrain, highlighting their own diligence and toil in the face of adversity once more. As before, it is a little insincere and reference the unknowable quality of success: I don't know but I keep working, working

Before we move into the final couplet, I have a favour to ask: If you’ve been enjoying this episode or the podcast as a whole, please consider leaving a review wherever you listen. It really helps to get the podcast out to more people. Even better, if you know someone who’d enjoy this podcast, please consider sending it to them directly. Thank you a million in advance. With that being said, let’s move into the last section.

half hating you,

half eaten by the moon.

Again,  the final word of the last set leads us smoothly into the next: Working, Working half hating you.

It is here that an ugly truth is revealed, if only for the speaker themselves; they are stuck in a love hate relationship with their dear reader,.

The speaker, and in turn Tate, the poet, will continue their frustrating effort to raise the dead, ourselves, even if it means they have to give up everything. That final line is completely haunting—half eaten by the moon. We finally gain an inkling into the speakers obsession with poetry; their want to write it has led to complete insomnia. Aside from half eaten by the moon being the most beautiful turn of phrase I’ve ever heard for insomnia, there is a further note of tragedy. We realise that our speaker has been at this fruitless endeavour for a very long time and that even if there was no reader, they would probably keep going. So, we were never that dear to begin with, and they are completely consumed by poetry none the less.

This might seem oddly bleak as a final note, but in all honesty, I think this is one of the most beautiful explanations of what drives an artist. The audience truly doesn’t matter; if they find value in what they're doing, that will propel them. I think it’s particularly poignant given that we’re living in an age where audiences exist with a certain sense of entitlement over artists. Fandoms are at an all-time high. With that comes an expectation of artists, or a sense that the audience should get to dictate what comes next. James Tate has written a quiet rebuke to this notion: the artist would do it without you, whether you like it or not.

As for the strange tone of the poem, all at once, both tragic and comic, it’s something that Tate was obsessed with. In an interview with his friend and contemporary, Charles Simic,  he was asked the question: So for you, tragedy and comedy are not separate?

In response, he said:

No, not at all. They’re in the same theatre, on the same stage. That's true of the best poems. You can’t tell where they are going to go. One can start with tragedy and end with comedy, or the other way around.(Tate 2006)

James Tate understood the unknowable quality of both poetry and art and refused to have anyone tell him which way it was going to go. I think in his poem, dear reader, he created a small reminder for fellow poets that their work is their own and shouldn’t be dictated by those who claim to love them. I think that’s a wonderful notion to carry into 2024.

What did you think of the poem? As always, this is my interpretation, and I’d love to hear yours. If you’d like to get in touch with me, there are a few ways to do so.

You can reach me directly by email: wordsthatburnpodcast@gmail.com

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Bibliography

Ashberry. 2004. “The Poetry Symposium.” The New York Times, November 21, 2004. https://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/21/books/review/the-poetry-symposium.html

Cummings, Edward Estlin, and John M. Rocco. 1998. Another E. E. Cummings. Liveright.

Gioia, D. n.d. “James Tate and American Surrealism.” Paperpile. Accessed December 13, 2023. https://paperpile.com/app/p/e9e40291-bb44-08de-93f2-46aee78f0cf1.

Gleaves, Jeffery. 2017. “James Tate Blows It In New York.” The Paris Review. July 27, 2017. https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2017/07/27/james-tate-blows-it-in-new-york/.

Hirsch, Edward. 2017. The Essential Poet’s Glossary. HarperCollins Publishers.

Poetry Foundation. 2023. “James Tate.” Poetry Foundation. December 13, 2023. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/james-tate.

Simic & Tate. 2006. “The Art of Poetry No. 92.” The Paris Review. 2006. https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5636/the-art-of-poetry-no-92-james-tate.

Tate, James. 1999. The Route as Briefed. University of Michigan Press.