You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed,

for you are the only animal.

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

Hi, this is Michael Silverblad, and welcome to Bookworm.

Today, my guest is Peter Levitt, who is a poet and a longtime friend of mine.

We went to college together.

He lives here in Los Angeles.

These last two years have been very good years for him in that two books have come out as well as what I think is a very beautiful essay in a third book. The two books are 100 butterfliesflies from Broken Moon Press,

Bright Root, Dark Root, also from Broken Moon.

And the third is a collection of essays called Beloved of the Sky,

and it's a book of essays edited by John Ellison,

essays and photographs on clear-cutting.

I weirdly thought that I'd begin by asking Peter to read a section of his essay called For the Trees,

mostly because it provides an easy access to his work.

I think that he is a genuinely spiritual poet, and this invocation seems to be a very human acknowledgement of presence and absence, which seems to me to be at the heart of spirit.

This is Peter Levitt reading the beginning of his essay for the trees.

For the trees.

If a tree falls in the forest, then there is no one there to hear it. Does it make a sound?

Question asked by the humans after they stopped living in forests.

1.

If a tree falls in the forest, then there is no one there to hear it.

...