Selecting a Reader

Selecting a Reader

First, I would have her be beautiful,
and walking carefully up on my poetry
at the loneliest moment of an afternoon,
her hair still damp at the neck
from washing it. She should be wearing
a raincoat, an old one, dirty
from not having money enough for the cleaners.
She will take out her glasses, and there
in the bookstore, she will thumb
over my poems, then put the book back
up on its shelf. She will say to herself,
"For that kind of money, I can get
my raincoat cleaned." And she will.

This poem seems to have a duplicitous meaning. Initially it seems as if Kooser, who is addressing the reader directly, expects the woman to read his poetry and place it back on the shelf, as if to say the poetry isn’t very good. It all seems very mundane. However, through his diction, he emphasizes the woman’s beauty with his diction; the woman is “beautiful” with her “hair still damp at the neck.” There is a certain amount of superficiality in his description of the woman, and that is finally captured when she says “For that kind of money, I can get my raincoat cleaned.” The enjambment at both mentions of the woman’s raincoat places extra importance upon the woman’s superficiality – she seems to care a great deal about her jacket. Kooser’s reply that “she will” then signifies that the woman is not worthy of reading his poetry. This isn’t to say that Kooser is arrogant and exclusive, just that the woman is not capable of understanding the significance of his poetry. In this way, Kooser achieves exactly what the title of this poem reads – he is selecting a reader.