© 2022 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
Last year on January 30th, my friend Dr. José Fernandez died of a heart attack on his way to work at a nearby hospital. He collapsed on the sidewalk in front of his home. It was an unbelievable shock. … Continue reading
© 2021 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
I read with Reuben Gelley Newman at Pete’s Candy Store in Brooklyn a while back and enjoyed his work; he sang a song too, which is something I always like. I asked him then and there if I could include … Continue reading
© 2021 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
Ama Birch got funding to talk to people in Ridgewood, Queens, hear their stories, and then make poems out of what she heard. Ridgewood is where Ama lives, and she knows it like the back of her hand. This … Continue reading
© 2021 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
I was so happy to go and listen to Melinda Wilson read at KGB that I couldn’t wait to get there. Her poems are sexy and witty and when they are angry, they smile. Her ability to focus on an … Continue reading
© 2021 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
Earlier this summer, just as the pandemic was easing up, and we could gather in crowds, out in the open air again, there was a poetry reading in Gowanus that I went to, right by the canal, a beautiful … Continue reading
© 2021 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
Etheridge Knight and Lamont Steptoe were good friends. Shortly before he died, Etheridge laid his hands on Lamont, and his last message to him was: “Keep poetry alive!” When The Painted Bride Quarterly put together an issue dedicated to … Continue reading
© 2021 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
In the 70s when Frank Walsh and I were both going to Temple, me for the second time and he for the first—we worked on a poetry magazine called Hybris, half hybrid, half hubris—It was Frank’s idea. We managed, … Continue reading
© 2021 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
Matt Proctor’s diary, City Life, spans from March to May of this year so it is hot off the presses, and full of little axiom poems that I enjoy: thought isa mirror it shows you who you are … Continue reading
© 2021 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
Marc Nasdor and I arrived in NYC around the same time. I remember when he curated the Monday Night Reading Series at Saint Mark’s Church with Chris Kraus back in the day. Marc (a/k/a Poodlecannon) is a well known … Continue reading
© 2021 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
If funny and witty had to arm wrestle with surrealism and reality for the right to be a Jet Wimp poem, they would struggle, elbows on the table forever going from the big picture down to the tiniest significant … Continue reading
© 2021 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
A few years ago, Sharon Mesmer, through a bit of serendipity and endeavor, began to discover remarkable women poets of the Americas that she knew little about, or had never heard of. As she began to find more, she … Continue reading
© 2021 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
The Vimeo below contains the 1959 Big Table Chicago Reading of Allen Ginsberg reciting HOWL, and the text is scanned from a third edition copy. If you listen as you read along, you will see that the poem is … Continue reading