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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 Sulfurblatt, and this is Bookworm.

Today I'm happy to have on the show two poets, and they are coming together in a growing

press.

What has been, verse press, is joining Wave books, and Matthew Zuprooter

of Verse and Joshua Beckman of Wave are joining forces to create a still larger press.

Matthews of Pruder is a poet author of American Linden.

It was published by Tuppergo Press.

And Joshua Beckman is the author most recently of Your Time Has Come,

Something I Expected to Be different.

And earlier, a collaboration with Matthew Roarer, nice hat, thanks.

I came into contact with Verse Press some years ago when I received a book in the mail called Letters to Wendy's.

It's by the poet Joe Wenderoth. Have I said that right?

And every day for something like a year, he went into Wendy's and wrote napkin-sized poems that were at first comic and then became more and more about satisfying appetites, larger appetites,

the strange ways in which we feed our yearnings.

It's a beautiful book.

It turned out to be the first book that First Press produced.

Then I got this collaboration between one of our poets,

...