You're about to hear a re-airing of a show taped earlier this year with Ocean Vong.

Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

Boots!

Where would we be without boos?

Where would we be without good? Where would we be without good?

No, Tenderberg.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we be without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com.

I'm Michael Silverblatt.

This is Bookworm, and I'm very happy to have as my guest, Ocean

Vong. He's the author of a book of poetry, Night Sky with Exit Wounds, which has won all sorts

of recognitions, perhaps most notably the T.S. Eliot Prize. Now he's written on Earth,

we're briefly gorgeous. It's a novel, but what pleases me is that it is a novel in its own way.

You've spoken about the conquerors' method of writing a novel, which is all confrontation and plot and winning this or that.

And you use the word proximity to describe your method.

Could you tell me more about writing a novel using the idea of proximity.

Yes, yes. Thank you, Michael, for having me, first of all.

I've always felt that there has to be a way to create without destruction, without disintegrating. And I think that it's no coincidence that

two of the sectors of our human species that are dominated historically by men, war and literature,

require destruction as a means to realize its success.

And I wonder now in the moment where we have more voices from different angles,

...