I had planned to [...]]]> My darling daughter Rebecca Rose Nelson turns 21 today and will be drinking Old Style at Wrigley Field and rooting for the Phillies. It seems like just yesterday I was holding her in the crook of my left arm as she wore a Seattle Mariners frozen yogurt cap on her head.

Rebecca Rose (May 1991)

Rebecca Rose at Birth, May 17, 1991, 6P

I had planned to post a few old poems written about Rebecca, or with Rebecca, and then got the bright idea of posting some photos. Of course, she was born in the analog age, so I’ve had to go through old journals and I am just stunned by the velocity of time.

Rebecca in her Rocker

Rebecca as the 102nd Dalmation

(She’s probably going to hate me for posting these pictures.) She told me the other day that when she gives tours of Northwestern University, she tells the story from 7th grade of her telling me she decided she was going to be a Journalist when she grew up. My reply was instantaneous: “Oh then you’ll want to go to Northwestern.” The Medill School of Journalism is one of the best in the world. When we toured there a few months later, she was overwhelmed by the size of the school:

Rebecca Rose at NU

That she ended up there, is an excellent student, has studied in London, Washington D.C. and soon will do an internship at Ms. Magazine in L.A. is the end of the story (so far.) But back to her childhood. Did I mention she used to have VERY LONG HAIR?

Rebecca Rose at Aesclepia, Wilderville, OR

Did I mention that she loves Doe Bay on Orcas Island?

Rebecca and Grandma Lesbia @ Doe Bay

Or that her Mom, Janice Berk Nelson, is incredibly proud of her and put a hip brace on Rebecca every day for a year or so when Rebecca was born with a hip dysplasia?

Paul, Rebecca & Janice

RR @ 2.5 in California

RR loves cereal

Rebecca and Janice

Janice, RR & Paul

RR

A few poems about Rebecca, or co-written by her:

Something I wrote for her birthday a few years ago:

Things You May Not Know About Rebecca

She turns 16 on May 17, 2007. When she was fresh out of the hospital, her mother & I were taught how to wrap her in a small blanket and we called her Baby Burrito for a time, then later, when she discovered her voice, Baby Squawker.

She had a pretty good diet until day care then discovered the joys of lunchables,
the oscar meyer brand of pre-packaged processed meat products she ate at the old
Green River Day Care next to the I.A.M. Hall and later in Algona. This was before she became a vegetarian for a time.

When she was two or three I started to read her bedtime stories, often stories I wanted to read but never got around to, or poetry, such as Michael McClure’s epic poem Dolphin Skull, which has the line I don’t want to become an eagle when I die, and she tugged on my sleeve and asked in her three-year-old syntax, Why does he don’t want to be an eagle when he dies Daddy? It’s still a good question.

She’s been backstage to see the Red Hot Chili Peppers, has met Hot Hot Heat, The Killers, Keane and has seen many concerts, the best of which may have been The Strokes at the legendary Crocodile Café. She still wishes I worked at The End radio station, but only out of selfish reasons.

A single child, Rebecca considered Kuma, our dog when she was small, and Zappa, still our cat, to be her brothers. A little furry, but brothers nonetheless. We both still miss Kuma.

When she was a little baby, when she still lived in Seattle, we took her to a psychic fair at the Chapel of the Bells off north Aurora and a palm reader said there is more in Rebecca’s little palm than they usually see in the average 80 year old. And don’t get me started on the HELLO that came out of the fetal monitor an hour or two before she was born. Ask her Mom or Leilani about that one.

Three months ago Rebecca was scared to drive around the parking lot at 24 hour fitness and two months later she was driving 80 miles an hour on I-5, with excellent instincts, like when she had to punch it to merge with fast-moving traffic. She’s a quick learner,
but likes it when things come easy to her, such as reading and writing. That may be the bedtime stories, like Siddartha, The Sonnets by Ted Berrigan, Catcher in the Rye, which Linda Cowan did not think was appropriate for a 12 year old and most of Moby Dick, among other tales. It may be her paternal Grandmother’s love of books, or the fact that her maternal uncle’s a professor, who knows?

She’s developed a taste for onions, was once a chocoholic and maintains her girlish figure by watching what she eats and playing tennis. She says she’s not going to have a TV when she has her own place, but even if she does, it would be only to watch movies and dvd’s. When she gets her own place it will be the first time in 13 years she can wake up in the same bed every day.

3:09P – 5.9.07

Well, if you have read up to here you must REALLY love Rebecca or you’re a stalker. Here are a few American Sentences that Rebecca had a hand in somehow:

1.12.03 – When I tell her the sauce on breakfast eggs is pesto she says:   Bismol?

1.14.03 – Peaches!  she said after shopping, not:  I like nectarines and bitches.

6.28.03 – She shoots me in the ear I shoot her in the eye our June waterfight.

7.17.03 – My binoculars scan the coastal mountains then WHOA!   A GIANT EAR!

7.17.03 – Custom restrictions! Good thing we’ve no embryos or animal semen.

7.17.03 – Mountains receding from the ferry! Rebecca looks & overboard spits.

11.17.03 – Our Jack-O-Lanterns were like two old men dying in a splash of guts.

4.19.04 — RR says: I don’t trust a place that does not have any refried beans.

5.24.04 — In the crook of her sleeping elbow stuffed bear she named Philip is trapped.

6.07.04 — RR’s school sneeze story when she had no Kleenex, used a kotex.

4.12.05 — She woke him up w/ her Ramones ringtone: I Want to be Sedated.

5.04.05 — Before the Kumba Mela movie – me & Rebecca eat hot dogs.

7.04.05 — I ring the doorbell @ Janice & Rebecca’s house — no dog barks.

8.04.05 — They spread his ashes w/ fur and bits of clothes the bear could not digest.

5.03.06 – She outgrows bedtime stories w/ assistance of her trusty I-Pod.

5.08.06 – I’m like totally gone from My Space forever – obliterated.

9.15.06 – A vicious clown is going to eat out your heart at midnight. (RR)

11.15.06 – Words Rebecca should not say in debate class: gangster, Jew and douchebag.

1.24.07 – The look on RR’s dream face when the army crushes a piano.

3.08.07 – Rebecca says I was drinking green tea before any of you Crackers.

4.18.07 – Each from our respective cars watching her tennis game, the ex- & I.

7.31.07 – Sign of age? She puts on vanilla perfume, I wonder who’s got cake.

1.16.08 – ‘Laundry first, then the car’ I tell her – radio plays Cats in the Cradle.

2.28.08 – RR’s memoirs: How a Jewish Princess Reduced her Carbon Footprint.

6.23.08 – Judith, RR’s going to meet George Bush – Tell her don’t be a suicide bomber!

& this is something I wrote for her 13th birthday:

Daughter Poem

& this is what she looked like in 2009, graduating from Auburn High:

Rebecca Rose Nelson, June 2009

I cannot express how proud I am of Rebecca. That she’s a journalist and an excellent writer I see, in part, as an homage to her old man. That she excels in school and attends Northwestern, has a strong sense of justice and is a kind and decent human being is a reflection of Janice and her basic kindness and dignity. I could write for hours, but for this important birthday I have to stop and say Happy Birthday Kid! Keep it up. I love you very much!

Photo by Philip Brautigam

They selected three haibun of mine from the series Haibun de la Serna. I [...]]]> I was fortunate enough to have some poems published in the latest edition of The Cafe Review out of Portland, Maine. There are some other very fine poets published in this edition. See:

They selected three haibun of mine from the series Haibun de la Serna. I am writing 99 of them and have already posted a recording of one of them, Dragonfly Resurrection, on Soundcloud:

Here are the other two:

& 49. 49th Parallel Blues

These editions of The Cafe Review are printed in small batches and with McClure and other fine poets in there, they are sure to be worth some dough some day. Enjoy,

Paul

The heart measures in blood everything that happens.
– Ramón Gomez de la Serna

The dragon stays stuck to lampposts at the
boundaries, but looks like a mountain lizard. The
ancient poet stays in the ear, but the [...]]]>

(206) 722-7209

1. Greguería is defined by its most notorious practitioner Ramón Gómez de la Serna as “humor plus metaphor”. These aphorisms had a [...]]]> OK, more harvesting done today and some news. Pablo Baler in his fascinating project The Next Thing: art in the 21st Century has a great end note to the word Greguería. It reads:

1. Greguería is defined by its most notorious practitioner Ramón Gómez de la Serna as “humor plus metaphor”. These aphorisms had a significant influence on European and Latin American avant-garde sensibility. This genre resurfaces later, probably inspired by William Carlos Williams’ typewriter length verses, in the American Sentences of Allen Ginsberg defined as a haiku-length poem of 17 syllables, most recently vindicated and exhaustively practiced by the poet Paul Nelson; and mostly unsuccessfully tried today with the 140 characters miss-typed by the masses of Twittnicks.

The Next Thing

Go Pablo!

Anyway, my own shouts out to: Sam Hamill, Eileen Myles, Willie Fitzgerald, my Subud brothers and sisters, Keith Jarrett, Alice Derry, PCC shoppers, Prius drivers, Phil Humber, baby Ella and, as always, the Wily Almondina. Again I have err’d on the side of putting too many sentences here. I may remove a few next update, but please (as always) feel free to comment. It’s 4,135 days and counting that I have written a daily American Sentence. Thanks Allen. All 2012 sentences published here: http://paulenelson.com/american-sentences-2/american-sentences-2012/

3.2.12 – In the dream I’m going down on her but wake up licking my bite guard.

3.4.12 – PCC car lot: can’t swing a smudge stick w/o hitting a prius.

3.6.12 – Hackers from Anonymous arrested – will they get to check email?

3.15.12 – Will promoting literary arts: “I’ll spam the fuck out of you.”

3.16.12 – Nurse Anita predicts: “A miracle of cervical ripening.”

3.17.12 – Under the c-section table her urine, he says: “Looks like pilsner.”

3.23.12 – Rags once used for mopping up semen now perfect for baby urp.

3.26.12 – Sam Hamill tells Mark: “You want to talk poetry, you better have a putter.”

3.26.12 – Alice Derry: “Surrendering salami to the yellow jackets.”

4.2.12 – Sitting outside on 15th – every woman is beautiful in Spring.

4.5.12 – Shift change: rock the baby, whistle lullaby, see my face in her eyes.

4.8.12 – “Genuflecting to my ice tea feels particularly spiritual now.” (Eileen Myles on Easter Sunday)

4.16.12 – Not likely to use the horn after latihan, but I still speed home.

4.17.12 – Why pick up after your dog if you just throw the shit bag on the lawn?

4.18.12 – “Employees must carve Slayer into forearms before returning to work.” (At Vermillion.)

4.20.12 – Keith Jarrett’s rapturous vocalizations or backseat baby Ella?

4.21.12 – Fuck you too slow driver – I’m going to do my spiritual practice!

4.21.12 – 27 M’s up, 27 down – Humber’s Safeco Perfecto.

4.23.12 – Rancid Egg opening up for Spastic Eyebrow at the Fukodome.

4.27.12 – Only Seattle: “Daily cyber deal – milk steaming latté art class.”

One of the great delights in organizing the recent Cascadia Poetry Festival in Seattle was the collaboration with Kim Goldberg and the eco-poetry panel entitled: Igniting the Green Fuse: Four [...]]]>

Igniting The Green Fuse

Igniting the Galaxies: Cascadian Ecopoetry
(A review of Igniting the Green Fuse: Four Canadian Women Poets) (download as a pdf)

One of the great delights in organizing the recent Cascadia Poetry Festival in Seattle was the collaboration with Kim Goldberg and the eco-poetry panel entitled: Igniting the Green Fuse: Four Canadian Women Poets. It was her idea to curate and facilitate this panel and she collaborated with the three other panelists to create a beautiful, hand-sewn chapbook for the occasion. Letting Goldberg handle all the panel details turned out to be one of the great joys of the festival, as she simply had the idea and ran with it. I sometimes wonder if it is the Canadian mode to be responsible and self-starting in this way, or maybe I just happen to get connected to people north of the 49th parallel who take charge. Regardless, the panel was a huge hit and the chapbook is a fine introduction to this recently-emerging genre of poetry.

Ecopoetry is more than nature poetry. The editor of the established Prairie Schooner magazine, James Engelhardt, suggests that ecopoetry is connected to the world in a way that implies responsibility. More than lauding nature (often in ways that ignore the darkness of which nature is capable) and certainly moving away from Man’s (and I use that pronoun with purpose) ability to dominate nature, ecopoetry as practiced by the panelists is willing to recognize nature’s bleakness. Or at least the bleak situation we’re in at this time in history with climate chaos, migrating forests and species and regular natural disasters; earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, &c. It seems to me that Cascadia would be an international nexus for such work, given the ecological responsibility we take in the Northwest. In Seattle, for example, they (the municipal government) come to pick up compost each week and turn it into dirt. I’m guessing we’re about fifty years ahead of Newark on this matter.

In the book’s very first poem, Goldberg by line two is contrasting the flickerflashing churn of brimming life with the smoky spew/ of diesel-powered winches winding in their nets. A reference to the harvesting of roe for Japanese markets suggests that the poet is illustrating the lack of bioregionalism. The subtext here is that this is an image of un-sustainability and we’re only seven lines into the book.

In the poem Mimotype, there is also this couplet:

Perfect as the kildeer eggs in plain sight.
Perfect as the crankcase oil dribbled on white sand.

I am reminded of Michael McClure’s ability to see beauty in the most horrific images, such as the flaming tire homicides popular in South Africa during the struggle against apartheid. Not sanctioning or lauding these examples of darkness, but having acceptance that this kind of behavior must be transcended for the species to survive. The planet will be fine. The ecopoem has a responsibility to look at all conditions affecting our natural world. We’ll forgive Goldberg’s bad pun on carrion luggage this time. Her poem Codex Exterminarius is described in the poem’s end notes as a “mapping of our cultural genome” and more blatantly warns of impending ecological doom from fossil fuel use. It includes actual car names in the text, as well as other constraints to get the point across with real energy:

eelgrass me in your sonatA=Tempo arms, shield my translucent
body with your soft rabbiT=Avalanche…

ending the poem with:

goshawk rock me in your omegA=Talon grip, shield my translucent body

until the end.

Kate Braid is not only a poet, an ecopoet, but also a carpenter, which gives her a unique and complex look at nature, considering trees must be felled for her to make a living. In one poem, she refers to houses as “a shadow, small violence to earth.” She understands well her place in the natural scheme of things suggesting in an untitled poem:

Those trees live without me.

After they are gone, houses
will take their place but spirits
will linger here. Ghosts will
wander up the stairwell
of some child’s dreams.
The child will wake with a cry
not sure if it’s fear
or awe.

I am reminded of Chief Seattle’s famous (and highly debated) speech in which he suggests that the settler’s dead “cease to love you…are soon forgotten and never return” and that “these shores … swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe.” An ecopoet’s responsibility is to the reality of these things, these resonances and their effects or potential effects.

I love how, in Braid’s poem simply titled 86, (from a series of poems about an imagined encounter between legendary Canadian artist Emily Carr and Georgia O’Keeffe) she likens emptiness to being “open to possibility.” The allusion to quantum physics is undeniable. In the poem A Geologist Addresses the Carpenter’s Convention, she reminds us that Mother Nature bats last in the debate between Concrete and

her mother, Volcano?
Volcano is the wild woman of the rock family…

Volcano is shameless, Fire goddess who’ll embrace
anything, erupt
over the flanks of mountain
unlike her grey daughter, cement, a Good Girl
who mixes politely

with water…

I have not read that ecopoetry is a genre that necessarily includes history, but certainly it is the responsibility of the poet to tell the story, lest it be left to the likes of the Rupert Murdochs of the world. Catherine Owen remembers legendary Canadian painter Tom Thomson:

with his colour-hyphenated
boards and cast-iron eggs by Canoe Lake that last summer…

Owen’s musical background serves her well in poems with melopoeia like:

moored gyprock chunks, the sandbar littered with swallow
prints & the eagle who slips back to its nest with the dripping

wiggle of a vole in its talons…

She can describe a river in one breath as gorgeous, polluted and also juxtapose “the Starbucks detritus and the watery receptions of stars.” Much of her nature watching comes from her 14th floor flat where she looks upon the Fraser River and roots for it as a method of dealing with the intense grief of a lover’s sudden death:

- yeah, I noticed
he wasn’t quite himself – too late and you’re left to a grey dream – why not keep
just this tiny breathing apparatus – the crows do – tumbling from the parapets -
black chutes zagging open – go river!              go river! – I’m cheering mostly
for the water now – loving how it’s always moving past me.

The last ecopoet in the collection, Heidi Greco, also reflects that responsibility of noticing the good with the bad, where on a night of watching for shooting stars during the annual return of the Perseids, she will:

Replay the muddle of the dream while it lasts
the two of us riding a sea canoe
paddling through a clutter of scum, gliding
a line that zags among a chocolate bar wrapper
a cigarette pack, the sole
of a floating shoe.

Yes, word melodies subtle and elegant grace Greco’s verse, but her high point (and one of the book’s most stellar moments) may be the awe achieved in her Beatitudes for the 21st Century:

Blessed are the atheists,
for they shall be proved correct.

Blessed are the recyclers,
for their spirits shall dwell in trees…

Blessed are the orangutans, whose intelligence shall be acknowledged
the horses, who shall rise in the sky, flying as they were intended;
the tortoises, who will be assigned more spacious dwellings…

Blessed are the homeless, the addicted, the unemployed,
for they shall be granted holiday pay and ensconced amongst stars.

I’ll end there and let you see how the poem ends, or how other poems play out, giving equal time to garbage from quintessentially Canadian food chain, Tim Horton’s, while also making a pilgrimage to notice 87 cigarette butts but find herself again contemplating the galaxies.

Greco’s offerings reflect the wide range of influences that separate the classic nature poem from the galactic range of the ecopoem. It’s well worth your sawbuck and your continued attention to this latest salvo in the ongoing story of the natural world of Cascadia and how we need to go beyond separating our trash to prevent the industry-generated culture and its minions from trashing the rest of our nation.

peN
11:21A -4.25.12