Spring Sonnets, by Don Yorty

Description

Spring Sonnets offers us an excellent introduction to the sonnet’s uses in contemporary poetry. The strength here is in the power of the lyric and Don Yorty’s masterful use of language and form in the midst of chaos, beauty, corruption, and death. He combines the New York School’s take on the everyday in the city, on the erotic, queer division, while also considering the spiritual—there’s God in many of these sonnets. —Patricia Spears Jones

The poems in Spring Sonnets are so good. I love the paths they take, one surprise after the other, and the voice taking them. They are so alive, and no straining. —Joan Larkin

Don Yorty’s Spring Sonnets tell the truth without any mumbo-jumbo. It’s like getting a letter from a friend, valued for its eloquence. —Bernadette Mayer

Don Yorty is a poet, educator, and garden activist living in New York City. He is the author of two previous poetry collections, A Few Swimmers Appear and Poet Laundromat (both from Philadelphia Eye & Ear), and he is included in Out of This World, An Anthology of the Poetry of the St. Mark’s Poetry Project, 1966–1991. His novel What Night Forgets was published by Herodias Press in 2000. He blogs at donyorty.com: an archive of current art, his own writing, and work of other poets.