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Boots!

Where would we be without books?

Where would we be without good?

No, Zintuberg.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we need without books?

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

Today, I'm very happy to have, as my my guest a person whose career I've been following

practically from the first, and she's been on the show from the time the show began.

It's Eileen Miles, and she has gone through all of the stages of being a poet.

That is to say, she's published early books of poetry, she's published short story,

she's published a novel, she's published travel writing, she has now been asked by the Yale University Press to participate in their series, Why I Write,

which has also included books by Patty Smith and Mousgard and Chip Delaney. It's a fabulous thing to have

Eileen Miles writing about why I write in a wonderful short book from Yale University Press

called For Now.

And what did you think of when you were asked to say why you write?

Oh, God. I thought, oh, no. Just the thought of writing something and talking about what you're

doing. Well, I mean, in a way, it's the essence of what I do do.

But the good news was that I had this other problem,

which was my apartment in New York, which I was almost on the verge of losing.

So the two intertwined, and that became a bait and switch,

...