© 2015 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… On a sad day of losses big and small someone left a flowerpot in the hall that wasn’t money or plenty of time but if I wanted it the thing was mine alive for sure because hint of a … Continue reading
© 2015 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… The quiet pond wrote a V when the water spider skidded forth, a V here, V there, the same V that geese make flying south. When a swallow swooped for a quick nip or a bass rose with its … Continue reading
© 2015 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… I woke up from a dream before daylight. I’d dreamt I tried to make a living plant into a work of art. It didn’t work. Trying to make it sculpture-hard it died. I was in a room with other … Continue reading
© 2015 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… This may sound apocryphal, but it’s true; I sat behind Cookie Mueller at Saint Mark’s Church while she wrote British Columbia—1972. I sometimes showed up early at a poetry reading because it’s a perfect place to sit and read … Continue reading
© 2015 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… Today is April 23, the day Shakespeare was born and died. He’d be 453. In celebration here is the poet Alfred Corn reading poems of Renaissance English poets including Shakespeare that I recorded at the New York Botanical Garden … Continue reading
© 2015 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… … … … I bought Cuento del Conejo y el Coyote illustrated by the artist Francisco Toledo when I was in Oaxaca in 1999 finishing up my novel. I’d first seen Toledo’s work about twelve years earlier when I … Continue reading
© 2015 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
© 2015 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… . WHAT ARE YEARS? …What is our innocence, what is our guilt? All are …naked, none is safe. And whence is courage: the unanswered question, the resolute doubt,— dumbly calling, deafly listening—that in misfortune, even death, …encourages others …and … Continue reading
© 2015 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… I Among twenty snowy mountains, The only moving thing Was the eye of the blackbird. II I was of three minds, Like a tree In which there are three blackbirds. III The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds. It … Continue reading
© 2015 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… … THE CLIMATE I myself like the climate of New York I see it in the air up between the street You use a worn-down cafeteria fork But the climate you don’t use stays fresh and neat. Even we … Continue reading
© 2015 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… From 1976 until 1983, Jacob Burckhardt recorded and edited Edwin Denby reading from his Collected Poems. Here is Sonnet 8 from A Sonnet Sequence. 8 Three old sheepherders so filthy in their ways Whores wouldn’t touch them with a … Continue reading
© 2015 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… 25 My cat and I play chasing each other. He jumps while I write and then stretches out full length in back of the warm computer to claw my hand when it comes in sight. Ouch! Ow! I say … Continue reading