Rejecting the New Millennium

Rather than embrace the popularized songs and the hype that accompanies the turn of Y2K, Don A. Hoyt examines the real accomplishments that one might expect from a thousand years of new experience. His lyric typifies only a lateral progress: "Behind the blue layers / is the dark of beginnings / disguised as emptiness / the abyss..." (Genesis Repeated). He finds "Fences / along / the road / visit every / nation.... Refugees have more than we" (Refugees). The evolution of consciousness has "grown static like the lost age of Aquarius" (Rejecting the New Millenium).
--- Randy Fingland, Publisher, CC Marimbo Communications, Berkley, CA

In this taut collection from memory and experience, from Deep-South meanderings, Don Hoyt records the "natural history" of his personal journey towards the New Millennium, examining, questioning, rejecting, creating, re-creating, interweaving his sparse images, packing them into these 33 poems for transit into tomorrow, and as a time capsule to leave behind, a poet's testimony extracted from the "blue layers" of yesterday, put down on paper inspite of the "blinding light." Since we have little choice but to accept the New Millennium, Hoyt's poems give us an opportunity to rethink where we have been, where we are going, and how we may relate to the dawning of the "New Age" and the territory left behind.
--- Errol Miller, author of Forever Beyond Us and Downward Glide

Reading Don Hoyt's poetry is worth the effort it takes to penetrate its dense, sometimes abstract surface. I think, the greatest joy in reading his verse results from the musical and intellectual control, and the constant surprises of thought and ear. His is an outstanding talent, and reading him offers the reader incalculable rewards.
--- Harry de la Houssay, poet and teacher