© 2017 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… I asked Kaveh Akbar if I could video him while he read at the Poetry Project and he said yes. All I had was my iPhone, but I put it to use, shooting him vertically, not horizontally because I … Continue reading
© 2017 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… I’d rather watch fireflies than fireworks pressing against the dark. “They’re vicious beasts,” Dad says: “All they do is have sex and eat their prey by the light they make. There’s the first one now!” I look watching it … Continue reading
© 2017 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
Yesterday I went to work on my sonnets and they looked horrible; changes I had made the day before that I thought then would complete everything were not as good as they’d looked; in fact, they were awful, and had … Continue reading
© 2017 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… It’s April. Everything is young and beautiful. But you’re not here. It might as well be winter. You’ve cast your shadow over everything. … From you have I been absent in the spring, When proud-pied April, dress’d in all … Continue reading
© 2017 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… Last autumn I heard Arlo Quint read at the Poetry Project. Afterward, I saw Drawn In, a chapbook of his, on the table where the authors put their books to sell. Drawn In drew me. I loved the drawing … Continue reading
© 2017 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore, So do our minutes hasten to their end; Each changing place with that which goes before, In sequent toil all forwards do contend. Nativity, once in the main of light, … Continue reading
© 2017 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… During the London Blitz in 1940, Edith Sitwell wrote Still Falls the Rain, perhaps her most famous poem, a Good Friday poem that ponders human suffering and the salvation of the soul, a harbinger of Dame Edith’s conversion to … Continue reading
© 2017 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… I was planning and looking forward to hearing Anne Waldman and Vincent Katz read some poetry at 192 Books—it would have been fun. But I do not move as fast as I used to, or time is moving faster … Continue reading
© 2017 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… Maggie and I had been planning to get together for a long time, but one thing or another kept getting in the way. Finally, last Saturday Maggie came over. The morning was pretty quiet, good for a reading; my … Continue reading
© 2017 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… Pelekinesis has just published a new collection of short stories by Peter Cherches called Autobiography Without Words, which is a title I really like by the way. Peter reads several of these stories in the Vimeo below. I heard … Continue reading
© 2017 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
This postcard was a gift from Bill Kushner to me. George Schneeman, who had painted it, sent it to Bill in 2002 from Siena, Italy where he and his wife, Katie, were living. George thanked Bill for giving his son, … Continue reading
© 2017 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… During January I was taking care of my father who is 91 and ailing, and about mid-month I wanted a little change, got up before dawn and drove Dad’s car through the still dark countryside hardly anyone yet around … Continue reading