© 2024 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… “Part of being alive is emitting stuff,” Alicia Ostriker told us during her reading at Stanton House on the Upper Westside at the home of Kathryn Kimball, who curates the Stanton Reading Series. “Emitting stuff, not only sweat, spit, … Continue reading
© 2024 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… On January the 27th, the poet Alica Ostriker read unpublished poems and an essay to invited guests at a friend’s apartment on the Upper Westside. I wanted to record her reading. My camcorder, after many years of good service, … Continue reading
© 2023 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… When Alicia Ostriker sent me a poem called “All That Year,” I asked if I could record her reading it, and she said, “Yes.” After we’d finished, I noticed that one line had changed. In the fifth line of … Continue reading
© 2022 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
Alicia Ostriker’s The Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog begins with a quote by Gertrude Stein: A very important thing is not to make up your mind that you are any one thing. The Old Woman, the Tulip, and … Continue reading
© 2022 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
A friend of mine, the Philadelphia poet Joel Colten, on a trip across the USA, stopped to take photographs of Mount Saint Helens, and died when that volcano erupted in 1980. At Joel’s funeral—his body wouldn’t be found for … Continue reading
© 2022 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
I read The Mother/Child Papers in one sitting. Perhaps it was so accessible because I was sitting by the Atlantic Ocean, at the same time of year as the book begins, in early May, but decades later. I like … Continue reading