As I recall, the passage also shows how both your dad and your mom were kind of good at wisecracking.

My dad was assigned by the prestigious magazine The Saturday Review to read and evaluate Herman Woke's novel, The Community, which features material that Herman Woke took from my dad's life.

So, and my dad gave the book a kind of a harsh review.

He says at one point, I don't see that Herman Wolk's defense of the officer who was overthrown the mutiny could justify cruelty, stupidity, and downright insanity in the officer class.

So it was somewhat of a harsh review.

And because they were friends, I thought it would be interesting to...

Imagine the first encounter that they had after this review appeared in print.

Well, Zach, in conclusion, are there any other passages from the book that you'd like to share with our viewers?

And Zach, you want to go ahead and read what my mother told me at the automat? Is there something you want to say about it? Or are you just going to jump right in?

Well, I guess I should say, Dionne, that this poem is about being single as a senior, which is not something I ever expected would happen in my life.

And I wrote some poems to begin the book that have to do with what I was bringing into my life as a single, even though I was still, I was a senior, there were things that came back to me about my life.

And this poem is called What My Mother Told Me at the Automat.

And for those who don't know, an automat is a kind of restaurant that was popular, I think, in the 1940s and 50s and 60s, where it was supposed to be the restaurant of the future because it had these polished chrome windows where you could put in money and take out food and you never really interacted with a person.

And it was like out of a science fiction movie for us at the time.

So this is what my mother told me at the automat for my mother, Mickey Rogo, 1919 to 1972.

How did you pick the way you organize it? How did it come together?