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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.

The C.R.W. Santa Monica, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm. Today, I'm very pleased

to have us my guest, Ray Armand Trout, who has a new book called Verst from Wesleyan University

Press. She is a poet. Her previous book of poetry was Next Lives,

and there is also a new and selected poems that was published by Wesleyan called Vail,

but the author of many books of poetry, whose work really, well, just in the last month and a half, I've seen poems

in The New Yorker, The Nation, a reprint in Harper's Magazine.

It seems like the world is changing in poetry that once was regarded as difficult or obscure is now being

accepted, in part because rather remarkable people are becoming editors of magazines.

I think Paul Muldoon at the New Yorker and Peter Gizzy at the nation, poets

who themselves can recognize a new kind of work and the need for new work. I was once called

by a listener who then sent a letter from Alaska telling me that the poems she heard on this show are not like the poem she heard growing up.

And without being critical or determining things in advance, she wanted to know what is modern poetry.

And so I wrote back to her saying that, you know, I don't think you can give a broad definition,

but if you look poem by poem, you can tell what the poet thinks

modern poetry is.

And if you look at a poem by Ray Armantrout, you can see that modern poetry is fragmented.

It comes in sections.

...