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, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

Today I'm happy to have as my guest, at last, Mary Campanagro.

She's the author of a collection, The Complexities of Intimacy.

It was published by Coffee House Press.

Her other books are Five Doubts, which was published by Marcilio, the Star Cafe,

and her first book was published by the legendary Lost Roads Press.

I say legendary because you try and find these books. Unless you have a

special, you know, connection, you're going to have to look hard, but maybe eight books will help.

At any rate, the complexities of intimacy is in paperback and in print by Mary Campanagro.

I've been wanting to talk to Mary.

I've been wanting to meet Mary for a very long time because the stories are so extraordinary in their language, their construction, their comedy, their eloquence, their mysteriousness.

And I want to tell you that, you know, there are certain things that I love deeply and crazily.

They're not things that people necessarily know of when I mention them, and I don't expect people to.

But there's a novella by Mandelstam called the Egyptian Stamp that I'm wild about. It's a great

anti-gravity work of fantastical imagination. And in the complexities of intimacy, there's a novella

called The Sun's Burden, and I've read it three or four times.

I still can't figure out how it was put together.

...