© 2017 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… A few Sundays ago I went uptown to Hudson Gardens, a beautiful part of Manhattan, a very intimate spot. There was a reading by poets who had contributed to Transition: Poems in the Aftermath, poets’ reactions to the November … Continue reading
© 2017 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… A few Sundays ago I went to Zinc Bar. I had never heard the three poets who were reading before—John Mulrooney, Laurie Price, and Sean Cole—and I wanted to hear something new. I enjoyed them all; they were worth … Continue reading
© 2017 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… Last Thursday I went over to Phyllis Wat and Dennis Moritz’s home on Grand Street just a few blocks east of the great (inexpensive) Chinese restaurants and markets before you get to the Bowery. I’d seen Phyllis read at … Continue reading
© 2017 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… I asked Kaveh Akbar if I could video him while he read at the Poetry Project and he said yes. All I had was my iPhone, but I put it to use, shooting him vertically, not horizontally because I … Continue reading
© 2017 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… I’d rather watch fireflies than fireworks pressing against the dark. “They’re vicious beasts,” Dad says: “All they do is have sex and eat their prey by the light they make. There’s the first one now!” I look watching it … Continue reading
© 2017 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
Yesterday I went to work on my sonnets and they looked horrible; changes I had made the day before that I thought then would complete everything were not as good as they’d looked; in fact, they were awful, and had … Continue reading
© 2017 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… It’s April. Everything is young and beautiful. But you’re not here. It might as well be winter. You’ve cast your shadow over everything. … From you have I been absent in the spring, When proud-pied April, dress’d in all … Continue reading
© 2017 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… Last autumn I heard Arlo Quint read at the Poetry Project. Afterward, I saw Drawn In, a chapbook of his, on the table where the authors put their books to sell. Drawn In drew me. I loved the drawing … Continue reading
© 2017 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore, So do our minutes hasten to their end; Each changing place with that which goes before, In sequent toil all forwards do contend. Nativity, once in the main of light, … Continue reading
© 2017 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… During the London Blitz in 1940, Edith Sitwell wrote Still Falls the Rain, perhaps her most famous poem, a Good Friday poem that ponders human suffering and the salvation of the soul, a harbinger of Dame Edith’s conversion to … Continue reading
© 2017 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… I was planning and looking forward to hearing Anne Waldman and Vincent Katz read some poetry at 192 Books—it would have been fun. But I do not move as fast as I used to, or time is moving faster … Continue reading
© 2017 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… Maggie and I had been planning to get together for a long time, but one thing or another kept getting in the way. Finally, last Saturday Maggie came over. The morning was pretty quiet, good for a reading; my … Continue reading