© 2012 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… I wrote the lyrics for the following songs mostly in my 20s. I was doing poetry performances in Philly in the late 70s and began singing with a band, The Sea of Hands, who accompanied me, before doing songs … Continue reading
© 2012 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… Was Robert Frost chained resolutely to the laws of metrics? “Iamb the iamb,” he said. As strictly as The Tuft of Flowers sticks to form (couplets of iambic pentameter), in the reading Frost changes words: the instead of a … Continue reading
© 2012 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
….. In 1968 at the age of 19, I was waiting for inspiration’s kiss when I was supposed to be the one doing the kissing, but I didn’t know that until I found The Waste Land on a dusty shelf … Continue reading
© 2012 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… … Apparent rari nantes in gurgite vasto. A few swimmers appear in a huge whirlpool. —Vergil … sleep vanishes When sleep vanishes then you swim. Awake is no island merely swift stroke and breath. The moon is not the … Continue reading
© 2012 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… Poet Laundromat was published with the help of Stephen Spera & Philadelphia Eye & Ear Press in 1983. It comes from a long poem I was working on called Fucking, but it took its own form from the larger … Continue reading
© 2012 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… I saw the bluebird first, its beating soft Red breast. Young water snake, I looked for it Next settled near the dock but it hadn’t Risen yet or already’d slithered off. The pond’s cold. I won’t dive in. It … Continue reading
© 2012 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… Happy children hunted for eggs and went bursting through the bushes. I’d hurriedly made them before that unexpectedly fast, put off for so long in a moment fun, boiled, dyed and done. Morning’s over. The afternoon has found a … Continue reading
© 2012 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… Had I left sooner or later it would All have been different, but I didn’t And got into two arguments, one in A store and one on the sidewalk about The neighborhood with two freeloaders who Do nothing, yet … Continue reading