(video by JWTNY whose other work can be seen here).

The business of lawyers is words.  Their precise meaning. How they function, alone and together. Sometimes a comma makes all the difference between winning and losing a case. Once, for a few tens of millions of dollars, one of my partners asked the Court of Appeal to rule that the word "sudden" meant "quick," not "gradual."  (case mentioned here)

No kidding.

And everyone was worried about the outcome.

So the law is a poet's profession.  Or, poets gravitate toward the law because, unlike poets, lawyers get paid to write.

The poets among us are so common that we have our own web site -- Strangers to Us All:  Contemporary Lawyer Poets -- constructed by Law Professor James R. Elkins at West Virginia University. 

Some of my friends are listed there -- Rick Wirick -- an insurance coverage attorney with the firm of Fainsbert Mase & Snyder LLP in Los Angeles.  Rick's book of prose poetry -- 100 Siberian Postcards -- will have American debut at Book Soup in West Hollywood in late April of this year (you can listen to Rick read some of these here).     

My old college friend Joe Mockus is also on Professor Elkins web site.  Joe is a criminal defense attorney in Oakland (Garcia, Schnayerson & Mockus) whose firm once represented Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedys in a Free Speech case (listen to Biafra chat with prosecutor Guardino on an episode of This American Life here).  Joe's one of the best poets I know.  But he doesn't send his work out and I have to beg him for it so I can publish him in the literary journal I edit, the r.kv.r.y. quarterly.  You can find Joe's poems here and here. 

I am more indebted to poetry than I could ever tell you unless we were chatting over a latte and I was talking too much.

Enjoy the Billy Collins.  The poetry alone is wonderful -- touching.  The videos are amazing.  Thank you YouTube for putting the means of distribution into the hands of the artists. 

I cannot resist also giving you The Best Cigarette Poem Video.  Hypnotic.