Author Archives: Don Yorty

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… 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 →

Alfred Corn reads English Renaissance Poets

23 Apr ’15

… 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 →

The Story of the Rabbit and the Coyote. Illustrated by Francisco Toledo, Adapted by Gloria and Víctor de la Cruz

23 Apr ’15

… .. … 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 was … Continue reading →

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20 Apr ’15

… 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 →

Marianne Moore and e. e. cummings each read a poem

19 Apr ’15

… . 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 →

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird by Wallace Stevens with ten engravings by Francisco Toledo and a translation by Luis Roberto Vera

18 Apr ’15

… 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 →

Edwin Denby reads The Climate and People on Sunday

17 Apr ’15

… … 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 →

Sonnet 8 from A Sonnet Sequence by Edwin Denby

15 Apr ’15

… 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 →