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.

Ted Kooser

Poseuse de dos, 1887
Georges Seurat

The Mirror, 1925


Big Julie, 1945


Woman Holding a Vase, 1927
Fernand Léger

Paris, 1959


Walking, New York, 1956


Canopy, 1958


Untitled (Pink Umbrella), 1950s
Saul Leiter

Untitled (Paul and Virginia), c. 1946-48
Joseph Cornell

Dorothy Norman, 1931
Alfred Stieglitz

June Light

Your voice, with clear location of June days,
Called me--outside the window. You were there,
Light yet composed, as in the just soft stare
Of uncontested summer all things raise
Plainly their seeming into seamless air.

Then your love looked as simple and entire
As that picked pear you tossed me, and your face
As legible as pearskin's fleck and trace,
Which promise always wine, by mottled fire
More fatal fleshed than ever human grace.

And your gay gift--Oh when I saw it fall
Into my hands, through all that naive light,
It seemed as blessed with truth and new delight
As must have been the first great gift of all.

Richard Wilbur

Nuit au Chalet, 1935
Willy Ronis

Barbara in Florence, Italy, 1957
Harry Callahan

Les Pommes de Terre
Ferdinand Coste
Exposition d'Art Photographique, 1895

Belgravia, 1951
Bill Brandt