April 28, 1985 - San Antonio Express-News

A little bit of poetry died with David Yates

"He was a visionary," Pat Ellis Taylor said over the phone. "David Yates managed to publish a lot of writers and poets in those 10 years."

I felt sad, hearing a dear friend describe her feelings and thoughts about a man who helped shaped the state of literature in Texas.

David Yates is now buried. He was buried nearly two weeks ago. Not many of us knew he had died. Fewer knew he had committed suicide.

Many shall be quick to knock him for taking his own life - others shall strive to understand him, to somehow also realize the toll upon a person who strives to survive through the arts. It was not his art and poetry that drove him to take his own life. According to those who knew him better than I do, it was the sheer physical pain brought on by unsuccessful back surgery.

Whatever it was, I recall him reading his poetry last year at my bookstore.

David read with a dry-witted passion, each word accentuated by feeling. He did not wince, yet he later confided that his back was killing him.

Cedar Rock

There are other reasons for writing about David Yates than his suicide. There is the fact that he did establish and manage an important magazine-journal that focused on poetry.

Yates published Cedar Rock out of New Braunfels, and it had consistent, dependability and flair.

Cedar Rock also had a format that was accessible to such notables as Archibald MacLish, Diane Wakowski Borges, Chuck Taylor and uncountable writers and poets.

One could find just about anybody in poetry imaginable, albeit only in English, and the poetry was passable to great.

New voices from the hinterlands of our state and nation to luminaries from the plateaus of poetry.

By age 45, when he died, Yates had connected poets all over the country, for he had "reached beyond Texas," as Pat said, to create meaningful bridges for all poets to use.

Questions

Death has many hues in its implicitness. Though it be there, resolute as it is, it can leave many questions in the minds of others when an artists takes his own life.

The past week has been one of meditation, for it bothers me that a poet would take his life, when poetry has often been defined as a life venerating expression.

I cannot fault another person for not being able to withstand the pain, for perhaps giving in to inadvertence or spontaneity. We are all at some point on the verge of madness, of suddenly visualizing a surcease of pain. It is understandable that some can momentarily succumb to an urge to still the pain, to cut away an infirmity and to enter into a realm many imagine to be painless.

No. I cannot judge another's actions and not because I fear being judged. It is only that I feel we all have different thresholds of pain.

There is pain, and then there is pain, and not one of us can define pain for another.

A life of physical pain for some can be unlivable, while others might find spiritual pain to be unbearable. There are others who cannot bear the pain of socio-cultural alienation, the horror of such ills as apartheid.

Some sensitive souls find that existing within a city that cares not for poetry or other fine arts can be painful.

Many are the reasons for anguish in our pain ladened society. And, I must add, there are just as many - if not more - reasons for also seeking out any venue for continued existence.

We must all choose the way we are to live and then strive to make our lives "real."

Poetry can be a means to search for truth, for the truth that can be embodied by our actions.

A poet's life

It has been a week of thinking about the human condition for me, about making sense of a poet's life, not just David's but also my own.

I empathize with him, with his physical pain and with his realization that a major dream of his was failing - Cedar Rock Magazine - due to a dearth of financial resources and the hindrance caused by his physical inabilty to carry out what he felt his mission could be.

That same trap has ensnared many a poet and visionary. Other publishing ventures have failed, bookstores have closed and cultural programs have died.

All those were attempts to share the power and vision of the arts in a way that was not commercialized.

David Yates managed to operate his magazine - a beauteous dream - for more than 10 years and in that time gave many others the means to also channelize their energies to realize a bit of their own dreams.

In that time and space, Yates fulfilled much of his own dream, and by doing so, managed to live up to much of the promise of poetry: human transformation and social response.

A tribute and poetical salute will be held in Austin at 8 p.m. May 31 at Paperbacks Plus Bookstore, 407 Lavaca, to celebrate Yates' having lived and created poetry.

It will be on Walt Whitman's birthdate. No irony is intended, for like most poets, both Yates and Whitman suffered for much of their lives. Neither knew wealth, yet both tended to share their best with others.

The Austin memorial tribute will be free and open to the public, and poets from throughout the land are being invited. Even in death will David Yates manage to have "reached beyond Texas."