Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

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 need without books?

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

When I discovered that Lawrence Verlingetti, my guest today, has a new book about to be published at the age of 93.

I couldn't wait to read it, and when I tell you that he's been assembling his work into an epic of American consciousness.

He has returned to the great questions of the American voice,

what is an American, what is the American mood, and in order to do so, he's modeled the new book on, well,

William Carlos Williams' Patterson, on Charles Olson's Maximus,

on Alan Ginsberg's Fall of America, and Ed Sanders, America, a History and Verse.

You notice that Ezra Pound is left out of that list.

The Cantos is not on that list because that's not an American consciousness.

It's global consciousness, yes?

Yes, it is.

Yeah.

And what I love about this book, which is called Time of Useful Consciousness,

is that for me, it bridges the gap between Walt Whitman and

the beats.

...