Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

You are a human animal, you are a very special breed,

or you are the only animal, who can think, who can reason, who can read.

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

Today I feel very happy to have as my guest, John Yao, Y-A-U, whose most recent book is

Paradiso Diaspora. It's a new book from Penguin. He is the author of many,

many books of poetry and art criticism and artist's books. His previous book right before this was English.

If you think you're hearing English behind there, you're quite right.

It was published with drawings by Thomas Niskovsky.

Noskowski, yes.

And this is the newest book. First, John Yao was being published by Black Sparrow.

Black Sparrow went out of business, and now most of the publications by John Yow, when he

has enough for a full book book are being done by Penguin.

Penguin, right.

And I thought it would be really interesting to tell you how I came to John Yao's poetry,

because in fact, to my embarrassment, I disregarded it for a very long time.

What happened was I wanted to find a book from Black Square editions.

I'd read, standing in a bookstore, a translation that John Ashbury had done of some essays about Giacometti.

And then I found a book of poetry, also published by Black Square, of a long poem called Bayard

by Pascal Monier, translated from the French by Cole Swenson.

And then before long, every time I saw a Black Square edition, I discovered it was something

I wanted. Now, literary presses are among my favorite things, but you really have to be

...