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You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed. Or you are the only animal. You are a very special breed,

for you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read?

The cow goes...

Hello, and welcome to Bookworm.

This is Michael Silverblatt, and today my guest is Mark Doty,

the author most recently of Sweet Machine,

published by the new imprint for literary books at Harper Collins called Harper Flamingo.

Sweet Machine is a book of poems.

It follows Atlantis and Maya Alexandria and Bethlehem in Broad Daylight.

He's also the author of a book of essays and egregies. and Maya Alexandria and Bethlehem in broad daylight.

He's also the author of a book of essays and elegy's memoir called Heaven's Coast.

Now, I sensed in this new book, Sweet Machine, an interest in shaping the book itself after the poem themselves had been shaped.

And it said that Yates conceived books as a whole, as a movement,

and that to read individuals poems in a whole, as a movement, and that to read

individuals poems and attempt to interpret them outside of the schema is

almost inevitably to misinterpret, Yates, some of whose poems become ironic in

the context of history and myth that the book fits them in. So I wanted

to ask you, first of all, is this book a shaped book and what are its contexts then?

I think that lyric poets are always looking for a way to break out of the prison of the lyric moment.

...