Author Archives: Don Yorty

Love Is Not All by Edna Saint Vincent Millay

… Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain, Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink And rise and sink and rise and sink again. Love can not … Continue reading →

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13 Feb ’15

… … Love comes when least expected and love comes like the rain blowing naked over us making us all wet. Love never makes a fuss. As I grow old, love stays forever young returning like the sun or moon, … Continue reading →

Some Thoughts on a Crosstown Bus: Elio Schneeman

9 Feb ’15

… February 8, 2015 I rode the M14 across town this afternoon to go to a poetry reading, on the way editing some sonnets I’m working on—no place better than a bus to work and read—but by the time I … Continue reading →

All It Is from Unions by Alfred Corn

9 Feb ’15

… If you like a poem, type it out and memorize it and you will get to know it better. Here is a poem by Alfred Corn called All It Is, and that is what it is about, all it … Continue reading →

Bad Boy by Bill Kushner

5 Feb ’15

……If you don’t want a house guest to walk around naked, never invite Bill Kushner. The man lives nude whenever possible; always trying to get back to the beginning, an Eden perhaps. Bill had some problems in his apartment and … Continue reading →

from Poet Laundromat: An Invocation to the Thunder

25 Jan ’15

… Shake butter from the cream Get hard and freeze to crack a wall though you happen very slow until you do like earthquakes come and then it’s Now Crack white light slivers from a cloud Spread mold upon the … Continue reading →

La Chevelure by Charles Baudelaire

21 Jan ’15

… Hair, we humans love it, its smell, its texture, its sometimes electric thrill, its personality in the lovers we are drawn to, and Charles Baudelaire was no exception. His love poems are superb in this regard. Jeanne Duval was … Continue reading →

Some Thoughts on Time and Regret

16 Dec ’14

… … When I was teaching in China, I’d tell my students, “Every day I teach wisdom, and if you don’t come to class, you will never get the wisdom that I was giving in the class you missed; you … Continue reading →

Rain: NYC, December 9, 2014

9 Dec ’14

… It’s raining, it’s pouring. Mayor de Blasio must be happy it isn’t as cold as yesterday because then there would be one heck of a blizzard with everyone complaining it wasn’t being plowed fast enough. On the M9 coming … Continue reading →

Early November at My Father’s Pond

30 Nov ’14

… I grew up on the property where this pond is now. The pond didn’t used to be there. It was a swamp of springs that produced one mighty stream. My father in the early 70s bulldozed the swamp and … Continue reading →

And Five More American Poets: Stevens, Swenson, Rukeyser, Lowell and Ashbery

22 Nov ’14

… Wallace Stevens … The Idea of Order at Key West She sang beyond the genius of the sea. The water never formed to mind or voice, Like a body wholly body, fluttering Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic … Continue reading →

A Good Day in October

27 Oct ’14

… Here it is Sunday already. I am posting some photos from Friday. We left early enough, Akram and I, so that even though I forgot my MOMA membership card, there was time to go back and still have breakfast … Continue reading →