Pub Crawl

About the Book

This is Ernest Yates’s twelfth volume of poems and the ninth volume in an ongoing series based on his wanderings through the streets of Philadelphia. Part Melville, part Joyce, part Bashō travel diary and part Barthesian semiotics, this account of a poet’s journey through the wilderness of postindustrial Philadelphia is much, much more a search for freedom, God, love, community, and home; a meditation on the city’s and nation’s history and on the poet’s own life; a tentative definition of poetic form; and an argument concerning the relationship between poetry and life. Emerson and Stevens―but also Brooks, Ginsberg, Kerouac, and Lorde―would be smiling.

About the Author

Born in Ancon, Panama, and raised in New Orleans, Ernest Yates obtained a doctorate in English from the University of Pennsylvania. He has lived and worked in the Philadelphia area for fifty years. Mr. Yates has published poetry in dozens of literary magazines and journals, and has won the Grand Prize of the Pennsylvania Poetry Society, among other poetry awards. For further information, please see Mr. Yates’s website― ernestyates.com