Author Archives: Don Yorty

Ampat Koshy reads My Favourite Chair and Why I Like It

Dr. Ampat Koshy is a writer and a teacher, and as a teacher— teachers are instigators—he manages several Poetry Groups on Facebook. Though he is from India, and teaches in Saudi Arabia, he has a worldwide audience of aspiring … Continue reading →

The Prologue

24 Apr ’21

a mouthsewnshut can stillmakeasound before you love anotherlook in a mirror until you don’t existthen smash the mirrordrink from your bleeding fist In the circleI’ve pressed my lips. If you press yours there … Continue reading →

Diane Seuss reads from frank : sonnets

18 Apr ’21

A month ago, I attended a KGB Monday Night Poetry Reading on Zoom whose featured readers were from Michigan and California. Diane Seuss, the poet from Michigan, I had never heard before and was surprised and taken by her … Continue reading →

Sonnets 1 through 19 written by William Shakespeare and read by Sir John Gielgud

11 Apr ’21

Shakespeare’s first nineteen sonnets are addressed to a handsome young man. Procreation is its own kind of heaven, Shakespeare tells him, urging him to breed, not waste his seed, but live on through his offspring. Beginning in sonnet fifteen, … Continue reading →

HOWL read by Allen Ginsberg

9 Apr ’21

The Vimeo below contains the 1959 Big Table Chicago Reading of Allen Ginsberg reciting HOWL, and the text is scanned from a third edition copy. If you listen as you read along, you will see that the poem is … Continue reading →

T. S. Eliot reads Four Quartets

3 Apr ’21

Four Quartets was a favorite poem of Barack Obama when he was in his twenties; in one of his university letters he even attempted to impress a girlfriend by writing to her about it. T. S. Eliot, unlike Ezra … Continue reading →

Ash Wednesday read by T. S. Eliot

14 Mar ’21

T.S. Eliot joined the Anglican Church in 1927, a man of no faith who wanted to find some. Perhaps the faith was already there, the faith, at least, that if he put a pencil to paper, he would create … Continue reading →

Charles Bernstein reads from Near/Miss

12 Mar ’21

I am a slow reader and come to a lot of books slowly too, but if you live long enough, as I seem to be doing—so far, so good—good books, or books that I enjoy do come. Such a … Continue reading →

Laura Cronk reads from Ghost Hour @KGB Monday Night Poetry

11 Mar ’21

I was very moved listening to Laura Cronk read from her most recent book, Ghost Hour. Her childhood and my childhood have similarities. Although she grew up in Indiana and I grew up in Pennsylvania, I could relate. Her … Continue reading →

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock read by T. S. Eliot

6 Mar ’21

The first poem that anybody reads who must read something by T. S. Eliot—I think of high school teenagers—is “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” Perhaps, like those who first read it, the poem is young. Many people … Continue reading →

Inauguration Poems, 1/21/21, curated by Dorothy Friedman

5 Mar ’21

For this past January’s inauguration, after so much stress beforehand including armed insurrection, Dorothy Friedman gathered some poet friends together the day after the official celebration for a Zoom poetry reading. This reading is captured below on the Vimeo … Continue reading →

Poems by Frank O’Hara transcribed by Ted Berrigan coming to us via Ken Angel Davis: The End Of The Far West

28 Feb ’21

Ken Angel gave me a copy of The End Of The Far West, a collection of poems by Frank O’Hara that Ted Berrigan transcribed and mimeographed in 1974 with front and back cover art by Alice Notley. These poems … Continue reading →