The Thank you. You you are a human animal you are a very special breed for you are the only animal

who can think who can reason, who can read?

Hi, this is Michael Silverblad, and welcome to Bookworm.

Today my guest is Galway Canal, and I'm honored to have him here on the occasion

of a visit to read in the UCLA poetry season.

His most recent book, published by Knopf, is when one has lived

a long time alone. It's the most recent of quite a few well-known and beloved books of poetry.

I think he first came to public attention with his book, Body Rags.

I know that I had quite a few poems memorized from the book of nightmares. He wrote the

avenue bearing the initial of Christ into the new world, mortal acts, mortal words, which were largely poems about marriage and family.

His selected poems, which I believe won the Pulitzer Prize, the past, and now the new volume,

when one has lived a long time alone. Thank you for coming and being with us, Gullman.

Well, it's a pleasure. i like the song with which your program

began today at least uh because uh really that's that's what i believe that we are animals and we're just

um one species among our fellow species.

And many of our troubles perhaps come from our supposition

that we're basically not one of the family of animals,

but some anomalous godlike being.

This godlike being. This godlike being seems to be, if poetic, capable of praise,

which seems in this book to be one of the great virtues of poetry,

title of a book by Robert Haas as well.

I wondered if you saw that as in the midst of the darkness that inhabits your work centrally,

...