Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

Boots!

Where would we be without books?

Where would we be without good?

No, Timberd.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we be without books?

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

Today, I have a very special guest.

His name is Mitch Siskind.

His book, a collection of stories and poems,

is called Do Not Be a Gentleman when you Say Good Night.

It's published by The Song Cave.

I'd say it's very unusual for there to be a collection of both stories and poems.

Are you a storywriter or a poet?

Or how does this come about?

You know, Kenneth Koch was my teacher in college and extremely inspirational.

A New York school poet, one of the central New York school poets that included Frank O'Hara, James Schuyler, Kenward Elmsley, and John Ashbury.

So he was a person that I think I pretty much remember everything that he said.

I liked in class. And once he said the difference

between a poet and a prose writer can be explained by considering the word ashtray. That a

prose writer is somebody who, looking at an ashtray, thinks of all the people who have used the ashtray.

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