© 2012 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… I’m ready sitting on the dock looking at all the work before me. Today’s sun breaks from the tree tops and the sparrows come and start to dart disturbing the floating sky rippling on the pond where I’ve noticed … Continue reading
© 2012 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… I am singular and we are plural. I see us walking on the busy street and waiting for the bus. Each day I meet him, Walt Whitman, whose kind face I see all over the place. Or I am … Continue reading
© 2012 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… I see how strong a fragile thing can be. Look! A butterfly comes fluttering over its own reflection hovering out in the middle of a pond so deep and close you’d think no insect strength could last the distance … Continue reading
© 2012 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… I wanted to make a video poem out of the Caedmon recording of Gertrude Stein reciting If I Told Him. In late May, shortly before it closed, I saw the Stein show at the Met and filmed some of … Continue reading
© 2012 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… The sun is bright reflected on water shimmering it to pieces. With too much light I’m blind. They say when we see God up close we die. I’m pretty sure I’ve never looked on God up close but every … Continue reading
© 2012 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… Acquainted with the Night I have been one acquainted with the night. I have walked out in rain—and back in rain. I have outwalked the furthest city light. I have looked down the saddest city lane. I have passed … Continue reading
© 2012 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… I focused on these sonnets, part of Sonnets 1 – 60, this late winter and spring prior to a reading I was going to do in Philly and managed to change most of the things that bothered me about … Continue reading
© 2012 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… I wrote the lyrics for the following songs mostly in my 20s. I was doing poetry performances in Philly in the late 70s and began singing with a band, The Sea of Hands, who accompanied me, before doing songs … Continue reading
© 2012 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… Was Robert Frost chained resolutely to the laws of metrics? “Iamb the iamb,” he said. As strictly as The Tuft of Flowers sticks to form (couplets of iambic pentameter), in the reading Frost changes words: the instead of a … Continue reading
© 2012 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
….. In 1968 at the age of 19, I was waiting for inspiration’s kiss when I was supposed to be the one doing the kissing, but I didn’t know that until I found The Waste Land on a dusty shelf … Continue reading
© 2012 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… … Apparent rari nantes in gurgite vasto. A few swimmers appear in a huge whirlpool. —Vergil … sleep vanishes When sleep vanishes then you swim. Awake is no island merely swift stroke and breath. The moon is not the … Continue reading
© 2012 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… Poet Laundromat was published with the help of Stephen Spera & Philadelphia Eye & Ear Press in 1983. It comes from a long poem I was working on called Fucking, but it took its own form from the larger … Continue reading