© 2017 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… … I caught Kaveh Akbar reading in Bryant Park last summer at an event for Sibling Rivalry Press and was enjoying the reading so much I took out my iPhone and recorded the last poem. I’d recorded him before … Continue reading
© 2017 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… Once I was very sick with pneumonia, had the temperature of 105 for several days, and my brain was as burnt as eggs fried in a pan, but as I lay there in a rank sweaty fever expecting death … Continue reading
© 2017 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… I visited Basil and Martha King at their home in Park Slope where they moved in the late 1960s when the house had little value surrounded by desolation and the turf wars of the drug trade. Their backyard has … Continue reading
© 2017 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… Akira Kurosawa said that the artist never looks away, never averts her eyes, and if that is the true definition of an artist then Julene Tripp Weaver is certainly one to be thought about and read. Julene and I … Continue reading
© 2017 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… A few years ago when he was passing through Brooklyn, Zack Haber found a book called Winning Office Politics at a sidewalk sale somewhere, and feeling inspired, bought it, and as he read, condensed it to its essential elements. … Continue reading
© 2017 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… Lydia Cortés was a Nuyorican poet before there was a word for it. She and her peers defined and were the definition. Everyone has a mother tongue. Often our mothers teach it to us, what we know of pride … Continue reading
© 2017 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… I went to Bryant Park to hear some poets read one evening last week and was happily surprised by a poet I didn’t know from San Francisco, Kazumi Chin, reading from his new book, Having A Coke With Godzilla, … Continue reading
© 2017 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… I sometimes think of Joel Allegretti as part Jersey boy and part Pop artist rolled into what he is, a poet. He came over to my place last week to read from Platypus, his new book published by NYQ … Continue reading
© 2017 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… Simon Pettet came over to my place on the hottest day last week, one of those NY muggy days in the 90s, sweat in your eyes and crevices, a mopping of the brow and swallowing drinks of cold water … Continue reading
© 2017 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… I was immediately drawn to Vincent Katz’s new book of poems, Southness, by the beauty of its cover, which comes from a painting by the artist Etel Adnan from a work called Untitled, 2014. Southness reminds me of paintings. … Continue reading
© 2017 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… I heard Cyrus Cassells read in Bryant Park a few weeks ago and afterward asked if I could record him reading some poems. Cyrus was staying in the neighborhood for a few days before he left for Spain so … Continue reading
© 2017 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… I had wanted to hear Hilary Sideris read with Jeff Wright a few weeks back, but I missed that, so the next best thing was to have her come over to my place. Both of us worked for CUNY, … Continue reading