are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

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. I'm Michael Silverblatt, and today my guest is Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

Hello and welcome to Bookworm.

I'm Michael Silverblatt, and today my guest is John Davis,

author most recently of Scrimmage of Appetite,

a book of poems published by the University of Akron Press.

I find myself going to Santa Fe, often to attend events at the Lannin Foundation, and when I was there, I had this book, Scrimmage of Appetite, pressed on me by many people.

He was introduced to me as the local eccentric poet, and when I opened the book, I saw why.

And so before I say anything at all, I thought I'd ask him to read in the sleep of reason,

and you'll know why too.

Okay, Michael.

In the sleep of reason.

In the sleep of reason, the bats, whose true meaning might be delicacy benign mystery a flight of hazards their comic faces thrust into the night-flowering cactus have become emblems of a dangerous chaos because they fly in. Because they should be birds and are not.

Because they twitter like mice and have access to our secret skins. Because the teeth. Because they

careen, dodging what we cannot see. Because their stories are told in the night, in caves,

because they are sudden, walk upside down on wings, because darkness is a kind of water,

because they can be upon us unexpectedly, like spiders and snakes, sickness and death death because the unseen is a threat

because hope and danger fly on the same wings because they stream out of the caves of

...