© 2015 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… 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
© 2015 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… … 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
© 2015 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… 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
© 2015 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… I found a dimpled spider, fat and white, On a white heal-all, holding up a moth Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth— Assorted characters of death and blight Mixed ready to begin the morning right, Like the … Continue reading
© 2015 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… February 17, on a writing assignment for the Bryant Park Poetry Series, I went to the Kinokuniya Bookstore at 1073 Avenue of the Americas to hear Tom Sleigh read from his new book, Station Zed, poems and prose about … Continue reading
© 2015 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… … Anselm … At Saint Marks Bookstore on the evening of April 5, 2011, I recorded Anselm Berrigan, his brother, Edmund, and his mother, Alice Notley, reading from The Selected Poems of Ted Berrigan, which they had just edited, … Continue reading
© 2015 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… 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
© 2015 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… 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
© 2015 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
……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
© 2014 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… 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
© 2014 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… As strict as Robert Frost could be about meter, here he speaks in variations of a loosely vernacular iambic pentameter, and when he reads, taking on the character of the narrators, he adds asides, and makes the listener feel … Continue reading
© 2014 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… TO THE EVENING STAR THOU fair-hair’d angel of the evening, Now, whilst the sun rests on the mountains, light Thy bright torch of love; thy radiant crown Put on, and smile upon our evening bed! Smile on our loves, … Continue reading