Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed.

Or you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

From KCRW Santa Monica, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

This is a really special and exciting show.

In February, the Lannin Foundation decided that it would put together a tribute to Walt Whitman.

And it didn't want anything academic or stayed.

It wanted to celebrate our most indecorous poet with our own forms of indecorum.

And here I am, with the three poets involved, those are Major Jackson,

whose most recent book of poetry from Norton is Hoops, Amon Grenin, whose most recent book of poetry

from Grey Wolf is Matter of Fact, and Patty Ann Rogers, whose most recent book of poetry from Grey Wolf is Matter of Fact, and Patty Ann Rogers,

whose most recent book is Wayfair. That's from Penguin. Now, here we are, and I want to begin by saying,

and confessing, you know, that when I got to college, I was not a

practiced reader of poetry, and Whitman turned me on. He was the man for me. I couldn't

believe what I was finding there. I found that my eyes couldn't go all the way across the

page. The lines are so long, so I started to read out loud.

And when I started to read out loud, I started to like it and walked out in the hallway

and walked across the campus sort of Piper style, reading mostly not to students, but to the runaway kids

who used to crowd around the round floors of the dormitories.

And then eventually we all sat on an elevator going up and down, reading all of song of myself until I was finished.

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