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?

Hi, welcome to Bookworm.

This is Michael Silverblad, and today my guest is Daniel Halpern.

He wears several hats.

He is one, the editor of Anteus, a literary magazine, which is one of the most respected

and of longest duration currently being printed in the country.

He's the editor as well of Echo Press, and he is a poet as well whose two most recent books

are foreign neon and tango.

This coming year is a year during which his selected poems will be published.

He's the author of seven books of poetry.

And he's a frequent anthologist as well, editor of anthologies.

So I hardly know where to begin. But I guess I'll begin by asking how Antaeus started. It seems to be a story that has something to do with Morocco and Paul Bowles,

I suspect. Well, the magazine began as an idea of Paul Bowles. I had spent a year in Tangier.

It was my graduate school, as it were. I was not a good student. And I went to Tangier because I had met Paul Bowles at California State at Northridge, where I graduated in 1968, I think it was.

And Paul was teaching a class there, and I met him at a party, and I got to be friendly

with him, and he told me about Tangier, and he said I should come over and get a glimpse of the exotic life. And it was about six

months later that I indeed went over to see him. And I was passing through. But I thought I was

passing through. In fact, I ended up spending the next two years my life there.

And after the first year, Paul said, it's too bad you're going back to New York. I'd been accepted to Columbia.

...