Hongyun

When Yates and I first met and had dinner at the University of Missouri he was an undergraduate. His work was brilliant then. This I told him and his department head. This Canticle for Electronic Music underscores the acuity of my forecasting.-W.H. Auden The Quest With great admiration for your work.--Joyce Carol Oates I appreciate this poet's concentration swiftness density: his choice for the deeply personal utterance and that only. He wastes no time with exercises set themes and other conventional maneuvers.-Henry Rago editor Poetry. He is violent and unpredictable.has a wild unconventional imagination.-James Dickey Dangerous minds investigate dangerous places in the mind. Most of your work lives in these places.-Yehuda Amichai. J. Michael Yates is the most lively and original writer of his generation.-Robin Skelton I appreciate your keeping me out of trouble almost as much as I appreciate your poetry. -Czeslaw Milosz. This young writer unlike most is fearless in matters of dangerous themes and dialogue which will clearly come over the lights.-Arthur Miller (as judge of Yates'Major Hopwood Award winning manuscript Subjunction.) Michael Yates is a great poet who has given us such a universe. I consider his The Great Bear Lake Meditations to be by far the most ambitious and successful meditative poem ever written in Canada.-Fred Cogswell