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Boots!

Where would we be without boos?

Where would we be without good?

No, Tinto bird.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we be without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and welcome today to Bookworm.

One of my favorite writers is with us. His name is John Keen. He's been on the show before. That time,

we were talking about his works of fiction. This time, we're talking about a book called

Punks, and it's a book of poetry that he's been writing since high school to virtually the present.

It's very charged and exciting poetry.

I am curious, how did you begin to write poetry?

But what first drew you in?

Well, first of all, let me just say thank you for having me on the show.

This is very exciting to be back.

I love bookworm and love listening to your interview.

So it's great to be able to talk about this book.

I actually began, I would say actually, I began writing poetry, bad poetry, like many people as a child. I was writing little poems. And I wrote poetry through junior high and high school and into college. I was on the literary magazine in college as in high school, but it wasn't until I

was a senior in college that I actually had an opportunity to focus on poetry. And I took a

Porsche workshop with Ishmael Reed, was visiting professor and he was teaching a poetry

and a fiction workshop. So I submitted both fiction and poetry to get into one or the other.

...