Errata 2020

This is Ernest Yates’s thirteenth volume of poems, and the tenth volume in an ongoing series based on his wanderings through streets of Philadelphia.

“Errata, you may be the eleventh,/or the thousandth, or the millionth//muse sprung up in America”?so Yates addresses his muse in the poem called “Fever.” And indeed it is Errata who leads the poet through the hundred neighborhoods of the city, from Somerton in the far northeast to Eastwick near the airport, from Chestnut Hill in the northwest to the navy yard in the south. Yates’s interactions with these diverse neighborhoods highlight not only the life of the city itself, but also the receptive spirit of the poems. In these meditations, the poet’s Philadelphia becomes universally relevant?an authentic reflection of any city, of every human habitat or condition.