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.

Hello and welcome to Bookworm.

This is Michael Silverblad, and today I'm very pleased to have as my guest, Tess Gallagher,

the author most recently of at the Owl Woman Saloon, and she is the author primarily of seven

books of poetry beginning with instructions to the double, under stars,

willingly, amplitude. Well, most recently, her book Portable Kisses was expanded. She wrote

another book of short stories, The Lover of Horses, and a book of essays and interviews on poetry

called A Concert of Tenses.

But today we're primarily going to be talking about her new book of fiction at the Owl Woman

Saloon.

Now, the thing that I noticed most immediately is that the first thing that happens in the book, having been prepared to enter

a saloon, we enter a salon, a beauty salon, and there are transformations throughout on things

of this sort. History gives way to personal history. Owls appear, but not necessarily hoot owls.

They appear as parts of expressions. So I wanted to ask you first about the title and that

revivification of the mythology of the West. Yes, I love this idea of putting these contemporary stories up against what was the Wild West.

And I also like that kind of jazz slip note of saloon salon and how that sort of woke up the whole idea of what the salon was, both the artistic salon,

which is my book of the stories, that display, and also the salon, which is the beauty parlor,

where we go in to be transformed.

Now, this is a book of stories, but in a way, it's something else as well, because

...