Welcome! to the web page

                             of Ernest Yates 

Ernest Yates is a poet of Philadelphia streets and a past director of Radical Ax Poetry Reading Series in Lansdowne, Pennsylvania.  His poetry has been published in forty literary magazines and journals.  He is a past winner of the Grand Prize of the Pennsylvania Poetry Society, as well as other poetry awards, and has read frequently in the Philadelphia area.  His books of poems include Billboards, Gargoyles, published by Fairfield Press in 2004, and The Master of Revels, published by Radical Ax Press in 2006. 

 I.  Ernest Yates--

        --was born in Ancon, Panama Canal Zone, in 1946

        --was raised in New Orleans

        --received a B.A. in Economics from Carleton College,  Northfield, MN,

                    June 1968

        --served in the U.S. Army January 1969-January 1971

        --traveled  and resided in Europe January 1971-August 1972, where he married                     his college sweetheart Jacqueline Roell on July 1, 1972, in The Hague,                        the Netherlands; the Yates's have three grown children; while in Holland                     Yates audited courses at the English Institute, University of Utrecht,     

                    Utrecht, Holland

        --received a Ph.D. in English from the University of Pennsylvania,

                    Philadelphia, PA, June 1977

       --has worked for the Social Security Administration in Philadelphia since 1976,

                    and has resided in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania since 1976

        --was interviewed by the Philadelphia Inquirer as a poet of Philadelphia, and

                    founded Radical Ax Poetry Reading Series at Lansdowne BookWorks in

                    Lansdowne, PA, Winter '03-04

II.  A city street  is an adequate symbol of the world's abundance and diversity.  To walk down the street is a commonplace act; to observe intently as one walks is to enter the realm of poetry.

Philadelphia is my home town, and as I walk its streets I like to imagine my brother and sister poets, my fellow citizens, walking the same streets.   I feel the syncopated rhythms of jazz music, soulful and sweet.  I think of the fragmentation, abrupt shifts, and call-and-response of visual collage.  And I think of the wanderings of Basho in 17th-century Japan, and especially of the rivers and mountains poets of T'ang and pre-T'ang dynasty China, as I trace my own crooked paths.

III.  A SELECTION OF FIVE POEMS

PAVILION WITHOUT A PAVANE

                                Moonlight

                                freezes the fluted

                                colonnade,

                                subdues

                                flowing spirals to shadows.

                                Languorous,

                                a countess

                                leans on a balustrade;

                                the parapet indents

                                her satiny derriere.

                                Footsteps on tiles

                                sound a phantom

                                scraping, as shrill strings

                                twist the stately

                                into versions of "All along the Watchtower."
                                God's masquerade

                                and courtliness subside

                                in the exposed electric

                                of the great good mob.

.........................................................................................................................................

2nd STREET

                                Every day poetry is inscribed

                                among mailboxes

                                            and fire hydrants,

                                            low down, where brick runs into concrete,

                                cellar doors rust,

                                and the sidewalk is battered

                                            by ten thousand footfalls.

                                            Squat down a moment

                                in the shadow of FIRST UNION BANK

                                where dirt particles separate

                                            into individual specks,

                                            and stains of old crimes

                                compose a jigsaw.

                                Here is poetry.

                                            Here is the real.

                                            Here is change with each heelscrape.

.........................................................................................................................................

COMPOSITION IN SMOKE #2

(Weedplot)

                                Three bottles

                                lie in the weedplot in front of

                                            BELL-ATLANTIC

                                            offices at 200 Spring Garden--

                                a MYSTIC, a SNAPPLE, and a 16-ounce

                                COORS LITE.

                                                                                            August 25, 1997
 

.........................................................................................................................................

SPRING NIGHT AT ELECTRIC FACTORY

                                A muted "Bedbugs" sounds

                                over the urban prairie

                                of parked-up asphalt lots

                                and high chain-link fences.

                                Squirrel Nut Zipper is playing

                                THE ELECTRIC FACTORY tonight.

                                The factory itself is a low looming shadow

                                under a darker sky.

                                The light of no stars,

                                no moon can penetrate these clouds,

                                a dark gray covering that muffles

                                traffic noise and the notes of "Hush."

                                Guitars, guitars.

                                Guitars and a distant wailing

                                sound over the rooftops of SONITROL,

                                echo dully from the low walls

                                of HOLMES PROTECTION, INC., SINCE 1858.

                                The Zippers have shifted into a version of "Do What!"

                                I lean on Willow Street against a parking meter.

                                An April breeze flutters the loose ends

                                of my bow tie and sport coat.

                                On my way to nowhere in this industrial zone,

                                i listen to "Just this Side of Blue,"

                                and then "Low Down Man."

.........................................................................................................................................

MYSTIC POET IN AN ALLEGED DEMOCRACY

                                You cannot look at a thing

                                that does not call forth a word.

                                You see a telephone pole

                                and you think telephone pole.

                                You see a TV antenna

                                and you think TV antenna.

                                Parking meter, parking meter;

                                DAIRY QUEEN, Dairy Queen;

                                gutter puddle gutter puddle;

                                and all the while the bent laurel twig

                                blossoming in your palm.

.........................................................................................................................................

    Onward and upward with poetry!