16 pages 32 minutes read

Selecting a Reader

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1980

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Symbols & Motifs

Glasses

In the poem, the speaker’s imagined reader pulls out her glasses in order to read the poems in the speaker’s book. Ironically, her glasses, as a symbol of intelligence, are the lenses through which the woman is able to read the poems and to decide that they are not for her.

The poet’s decision to employ the symbol of glasses in this poem lends a humorous tone to the reader’s experience of the poem. The woman’s glasses allow her to see the poems more clearly, which leads her to reject them with certainty. Glasses, and their connotation of wisdom and intelligence, enable the woman to turn away from poetry, which suggests that perhaps the poet himself is ambivalent about the role of poetry in everyday life.

Dampness and Intimacy

The woman’s “damp” (Line 4) hair symbolizes femininity and the speaker’s desire for the imagined woman he has selected as his reader. In “Selecting a Reader,” the woman’s damp hair demonstrates her sexual viability. The woman is “beautiful” (Line 1), and her hair is damp, which suggests that she has recently bathed or showered. This intimate detail about the woman’s hair reinforces the libidinous elements of the male gaze mentioned in the Themes section of the guide as the male speaker engages in his fantasy of her. The woman the speaker imagines is not merely the speaker’s ideal reader; she is also the object of the speaker’s desire. Conversely, the speaker of the poem seems more drawn to the woman reader he imagines because she wants nothing to do with him, as evidenced by her decision to put his book back and move on with her day. For the speaker and the purposes of this particular fantasy detailed in the poem, a woman who rejects his work is more alluring to him than one who offers him praise or validation.

Poetry

The narrative arc of Kooser’s poem bolsters the motif of poetry itself and its various roles in different people’s lives. According to the speaker’s imaginings of his reader, any person should feel comfortable approaching poetry and engaging with it. In his interview with Kenyon Review, Kooser criticizes “teachers who say, ‘The following poem has a meaning that I want to dig out. I have it written down in the back of my Teacher’s Guide,’” following this assertion with the claim that “[a] poem does not have to have a meaning!” In this poem, the speaker’s imagined reader does not have a particularly meaningful experience with the poems she rejects. The poems, in fact, encourage her to do something rather meaningless with the money she could have spent on the poems.

The idea that poetry need not have a special or esoteric meaning comes across in the woman’s attitude toward the speaker’s book. In Line 2, the woman is “walking carefully” to the speaker’s poetry. This action suggests that the woman is unsure about her movements towards the book. She “thumbs” (Line 9) through the book as if she’s reading a magazine or some other familiar and approachable text. The woman, the speaker’s ideal reader, demonstrates how accessible and approachable poetry can be.

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