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.

Hello and welcome to Bookworm.

My name is Michael Silverblatt, and today my guest is Arthur C.

He's the author, most recently, of the Red Shifting Web,

which is published by Copper Canyon Press.

And it is a collection of his poems from 1970 to 1998.

This is basically all the books selections from the early books

and the complete texts of the most recent books,

as well as new poems.

I'm sitting in Santa Fe in the literary library of the Lannin Foundation.

Author C. is a Lannin Prize winner, and really over the last several years has been awarded

most of the prestigious prizes and grants

that the poetry world has to offer. He has been living in Santa Fe for the last, how long is it

Arthur? Twenty-six years. And teaching variously around New Mexico, and what are the auspices that that teaching has

occurred under? Well, I came to New Mexico in 1972, and for 10 years from 1973 to 83, I worked as a poet

in the schools through the New Mexico Arts Division.

And because I had never lived in New Mexico before, I stumbled into a job that I was offered to be a visiting poet.

I got to work all over the state.

...