Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

Boots!

Where would we be without books?

Where would we be without good?

No to turn to bird.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we be without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt.

This is Bookworm, and I'm very happy to have as my guest, Alan Felsenthal.

It's his first book of poetry.

It's called Lonely, and it's published by

the independent press, Ugly Duckling Press. Now, I have to begin by saying that 15 years ago,

I met a young poet. Somehow or other, I managed to encourage him. He went on to study poetry at the Iowa

poetry program, and years have gone by, 15 to be exact. And he's just published his first book of poetry. Not only has he published

this first book of poetry, Loli, it's dedicated to me. And this is the first book that has ever been

dedicated to me. And it makes me feel very honored, proud, peculiar, strange.

I open the book to read it again, and I come to the page with my name,

and I say, hey, what's my name doing there?

It's such a funny feeling.

Now, we've been in conversation about poetry,

but I have not been looking at his poetry for all this time.

It would have been too intense. So now I've finally read this book, and it really is an extraordinary book.

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