ERNEST YATES is an American poet, most notable as a poet of Philadelphia streets.  His characteristic poems are short Buddhist-inspired meditations on people, objects, and incidents that Yates has encountered in his many wanderings through the city.  As Yates interacts with city sights and sounds, a dual portrait emerges, of an imagination that engages with its surroundings―the city―and of the city itself.  In the mysterious relationship between imagination and external surroundings, normative values such as love, liberty, and beauty emerge as imaginative possibilities.