Welcome back to the Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios. I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Friday, November 17, 2023. Today's poem is by our dear old friend Ted Cooser, and it's called Selecting a Reader. This rounds out our themed week of poems addressed to their reader.

And this is a nice note to end on.

Several of the poems we've read have been very earnest or taken themselves very seriously.

This is the perfect kind of poem that captures something true and valuable about

poetry. Arguably, it does what poetry is supposed to do, and yet does not take itself very

seriously.

I'll read the poem once, say, a thing or two, and then read it again.

This is 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 would 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.

As I said, no self-seriousness here.

This is a fun jab at the impracticality of poetry.

It's superfluous in the best kind of ways.

Poetry is liberal.

It's not the thing that makes the gears of the world turn in any kind of pragmatic sense.

It is a thing that exists for itself, for the sake of beauty.

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