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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, it's a true pleasure to have as my guest, Kevin Young.

We're going to be talking about two books he's done.

One is an anthology.

He's edited called Blues Poems, and it's come out from the

Everyman Library Pocket Poets series. And the other is a book of his own poems called Jelly Roll, a blues.

He's the author as well of a book-length double-album poem called Tiripel Ghosts.

It was a wild improvisation on the life, fame, and death of Basquiat.

And his first book was Most Way Home.

Those books were published by Zoland Books, Jelly Roll.

His new one is published by Knopf.

Now, it seems to me that what's going on here

is that you are finding a way to put the lyric poem

back into the tradition of song that gave rise to it.

And it seems like somehow or other,

the many attempts to turn poems into songs, I think of Quincy Troupe, for instance.

...