Hereby Monsters is a podcast about facing the unknown. I, uh, I start to float, float away from the earth. Have you ever smoked crack before? We're all kind of frantically searching for meaning. They have the neurotransmitters. I think we're all jugglers in some way. Yo, we're not broken. Crazy delinquents. We're in our last day, young man. Listen to Hear Be Monsters.

The podcast about the unknown.

On the KCRW iTunes page.

Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannon Foundation.

Boots.

Well, with me, there, we're going to. by Lannin Foundation. Boots. Where would we be without boos?

Where would we be without good?

Nottingbird.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we be without books?

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

I'm talking with Brian Blanchfield about his latest book, Proxies, Essays Near Knowing.

He's a poet as well as an essayist, but these essays are mini-memoirs. They're,

well, stories that he tells on himself. I think that I don't know another book that becomes as forward in addressing its reader with all of the things that might be

hidden in another writer's work. What made you choose shamelessness as one of the constraints for these essays.

Well, thanks, Michael.

I mean, it's such a pleasure to be here.

First, I just want to say.

This is a great honor.

I love the show.

I listen to it all the time.

Yeah, shamelessness, I'm not sure if these are shameful or shameless

...