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.

Today I'm very happy to have as my guest, Anne Waldman, whose new book of poetry from Penguin

is called Manatee, Humanity.

And I want to say immediately that it challenges the affirmation in that song

that we are the only animals who think, reason, and read,

because much of the book is about the kind of communication

that animals make to us a form even of imprecation that animals make to us a form even of imprecation

that ask us to transform our lives.

Now, as I understand it,

this book has its beginning in an initiation ritual that was put into use out of the sense that in this dark age of

Kaliuga, we need many initiates trained in the ability of compassion and that this was a training three days

in compassion.

Yes, the color chakra, which actually means wheel of time, so that one is sort of investigating

the nature of time from, you know, the very

slight attoseconds, nanoseconds, to, you know, considering vast other kinds of life

forms and the non-human elemental. So everything comes into this cosmos as a way of seeing, of course, the interconnectedness.

And then you're working really on the practice of empathy and compassion and, you know, feeling that.

...