Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

Boots!

Where would we be without boos?

Where would we be without good?

No, Zimberg.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we mean without books?

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

Today I'm very happy to have as my guest, Ray Armantrout.

When I last saw Ray, it was four years ago, and she had just won the Pulitzer Prize

for her collection, Verst. Her new collection, Just Saying, is just out from Wesleyan University

Press. And on our last show, I was very surprised. Both listeners and, well, yours truly, Michael

Silverblatt, I felt as if I was hallucinating and understanding, a clear understanding, of the poems

of Ray Armantrout. She had told me on the telephone, I'm a teacher.

I know how to teach poems.

And we really did.

This time round, I feel as if the poems have gone on new orbits.

They've dispersed themselves yet again.

These poems are many of them written about travel and states of mind that are not settled states.

And they are even more clearly interruptions, constant interruptions in which the poem finds bits and pieces.

And I thought that I'd ask you to read a poem that has a literal interruption, a poem called

transactions.

...