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.

Hello and welcome to Bookworm.

Today my guest is Hans Magnus Ensensberger.

He is visiting Los Angeles from Munich under the auspices of the Goethe Institute.

I was so surprised to find him in our presence.

His is a name I have known for years.

I was first directed to his work by my teacher, Donald Barthelme.

And then I found an essay, a rather remarkable and disturbing essay,

in praise of literacy in the magazine, Grand Street. I have read his collection of essays

published in America by Pantheon called Europe, Europe, forays into a continent. And most

recently, the new press has published his essay on Civil Wars.

Hans Magnus Ensensberger belongs to a tradition in which our major essayists in world literature have also been poets.

Those who've been fortunate to can read Joseph Brodsky not only on the

poetry of Hardy, but also on the Byzantine Empire, an extraordinary essay. Those who read

the poetry of our National Laureate Robert Haas are frequently unaware that he writes some of the best essays being published anywhere in America.

And so, too, Hans Magnus Ensensberger is a German poet. He is living in Munich.

And he is also an essayist, political theorist,ist perhaps of no mean quality.

What I wanted to begin by doing is to ask you whether you see a connection between poetry and the essay as congenial forms.

Yes, there is, of course, a long tradition in my own country.

...