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Part of poetry is learning how to speak. Chili Billy. I'm also a horse. I really value my life,

even though I know it's debatable whether I'm even really alive.

The right reading for this is the one I'm giving it.

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Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannon Foundation.

Boots.

Where would we be without boos?

Where would we be without good?

No to turn.

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 thrilled to have as my guest, Jeff Dyer, who's written a book called White Sands.

Its subtitle is Experiences from the Outside World. Other people have described

it as a book of essays. I don't know how they've decided that that's what it is. It's a book

of experiences from the outside world. Now, what are experiences from the outside world? Well, yeah, I'm glad you're not entirely

comfortable with that description of it as a book of essays. I'm certainly not. We'll come back

to that. But yeah, let's start with the subtitle. Experiences from the outside world. It's taken from

Lawrence's essay on New Mexico, where famously he said that, you know, when he first took in this sort of vast landscape, he said it was the greatest experience from the outside world he'd ever had.

So, I guess at the most literal level, we could say it's about the out you know the external world as opposed to the world that takes place in buildings but I think the Lawrence thing is important because there's a distinction maybe between the internal world in his head and the external world out there.

A friend of mine before I'd read the travel writings of D.H. Lawrence said to me that Lawrence is

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