© 2018 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… I was visiting Ken Angel in his studio last week and on leaving he handed me—he is a gift-giver—an early printing of a book he did of some of the poetry collaborations that Bill Kushner and Tom Savage used … Continue reading
© 2018 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… One thing that’s been good about Facebook is that it has connected me with poets from other parts of the world. This is a very expansive endeavor that focuses finally on the clarity of a poem. Through poetry groups … Continue reading
© 2018 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… Last spring, before leaving upstate New York where I’d been living for awhile, I made a beeline for Bernadette Mayer’s house so that I could record her reading from a new chapbook she’d given me called the complete work … Continue reading
© 2018 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… The flawed human we all know as William Butler Yeats wrote like an angel, but when he read his words, he didn’t intone them so much as drone them, which if one listens enough to old recordings, seems to … Continue reading
© 2018 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… “Who ever loved, that loved not at first sight?” Christopher Marlowe asked us in iambic pentameter a few years back, and I thought of that as I began to read If This Is Paradise Why Are We Still Driving? … Continue reading
© 2018 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… I heard about an art opening last May through a Facebook friend, Philip Nikolayev, and from the painting he included with the invitation, I was very interested. And I almost went, but at the last minute I was asked … Continue reading
© 2018 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… Poet, provocateur, musician, among so many other things, Barbara Barg died of cancer in Chicago on May 22, 2018 at the age of 71. Even though I was expecting the news, the earth trembled under my feet when I … Continue reading
© 2018 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… I met up with Anne Waldman on a Friday last April at her house in the West Village to record her reading from First Baby Poems, a favorite book of mine. Anne had just come from Penguin Books where … Continue reading
© 2018 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… The unflattering sketch of Marie Antoinette above on the way to her execution was done by Jacques-Louis David, a Jacobin who had voted for her death. Though some in the crowd jeered and spit, Marie Antoinette, we can see, … Continue reading
© 2018 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… … When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state, And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, And look upon myself, and curse my fate, Wishing me like to one more rich … Continue reading
© 2018 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… I am always amazed at the pace Robert Rhodes works. Every day he does something new. It almost seems impossible, sometimes even a little terrifying, but always beautiful. Here are some green summer studies he did yesterday, July 9, … Continue reading
© 2018 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… Walking back from Grand Street between Allen and the Bowery; some of the best shopping—my niece is coming. Bought some beautiful cut sunflowers. Stopped by First Avenue and maybe 3rd Street—east side of the avenue anyway—to take these pictures. … Continue reading