Hereby Monsters is a podcast about facing the unknown. I, uh, I start to float, float away from the earth. Have you ever smoked crack before? We're all kind of frantically searching for meaning. They have the neurotransmitters. I think we're all jugglers in some way. Yo, we're not broken. Crazy delinquents. We're in our last day, young man. Listen to Hear Be Monsters.

The podcast about the unknown.

On the KCRW iTunes page.

Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannon Foundation.

Boots.

Where would we be without boos?

Where would we be without good? No, to bird.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we be without books?

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

Today, I'm doing my favorite kind of show.

I hope to those of you who know the poet John Wieners,

you'll be happy to hear him spoken of. To those of you who know the poet John Wieners, you'll be happy to hear him spoken of.

To those of you who have never heard of him, you'll be happy to learn that a great American

poet, John Wieners, now has a book.

It's published by Wave Press. it's called supplication.

It's been at least 15 years since a Wiener's book of poems has been in print.

And I wanted to start by telling you something that Wieners says about poetry that makes him crucial, at least

to my way of thinking.

In a piece called the lanterns along the wall, he says, poetry is the most magical of all

the arts, creating a lifestyle for its practitioners that safeguards

and supports them. Along the way to becoming an artist are many pitfalls, for those who do

...