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.

Hi, welcome to Bookworm.

This is Michael Silverblad, and today my guests are Robert Gluck,

the author of Reader, just published by the Lapis Press,

and Amy Gersler.

They are both West Coast, California poets,

and Robert Gluck has come to town to read at Beyond Baroque.

Tell me.

Though, in fact, I was raised in Los Angeles.

Oh, were you?

Yeah, in the West Valley.

The West Valley?

Uh-huh. I went to UCLA.

My goodness.

This book is fairly unusual.

In fact, it invents a whole kind of poem.

I thought we'd talk about the title, Reader.

It's a reader, obviously, in the weekly reader sense,

but it seems to be a book that reads itself.

...