Paul Nelson is founder of SPLAB (Seattle Poetics LAB) in Seattle, the Cascadia Poetry Festival and the August POetry POstcard Fest (PoPo). www.POPO.cards. He has published a collection of essays, Organic Poetry & a serial poem re-enacting the history of Auburn, WA, A Time Before Slaughter (shortlisted for a 2010 Genius Award by The Stranger) and American Sentences, a book of 17 syllable poems drawn from the first fourteen of his 20 years of daily practice. The tenth anniversary edition of that book includes Pig War: & Other Songs of Cascadia. He’s interviewed Allen Ginsberg, Michael McClure, Wanda Coleman, Anne Waldman, Sam Hamill, Robin Blaser, Nate Mackey, Eileen Myles, George Bowering, Diane di Prima, Brenda Hillman, George Stanley, Joanne Kyger & many Cascadia poets (see: https://paulenelson.com/americanprophets/) has presented his poetry and poetics in London, Brussels, Bothell, Cumberland, BC, Qinghai and Beijing, China, Lake Forest, Illinois, Ukiah, CA, and other places & writes an American Sentence every day. www.PaulENelson.com
Your life wasn’t easy, filled with depths and heights, but the poems you scattered lined our pathways like crushed poppies, releasing a resin to soothe our pain.
James Hillman taught you the Soul dives deep, inside the molten core, while Spirit’s like a rocket’s red glare.
Poetry was your form of spiritual practice, diving and soaring to find the balance of longing and hope.
At the bright red stop sign of reality, you clapped those ruby slippers and raced off, like a fire truck, to rust-shaded Mars, or, if held by gravity and duty, to Uluru in Australia’s fiery desert, just to escape into the longer wavelengths of a cardinal sunset.
Drawn by heated visions of desire, you descended into Hades’ realm, but spurned the pomegranate. Returning, you followed your heart, throwing caution into that red wheelbarrow, where icebox plums lie underneath a mound of scarlet berries.
Spiritually naked, you got sunburned and delirious, but it didn’t matter, since that way led to answers.
Crowing like a rooster, you became the Red Queen in Wonderland, dancing madly in a lobster quadrille, requesting that all roses be painted your special hue.
During this visit, the Cook baked you a cake, with cayenne, redcurrants, and cranberry icing.
Finally, it was time to go – entering an antique red phone box, morphing into Wonder Woman, with tomato-colored boots and the Lasso of Truth, you’ve left behind your poems to guide us forward.
The Red Queen (Elegy for Judith Roche)
Your life wasn’t easy, filled with depths and heights,
but the poems you scattered lined our pathways like
crushed poppies, releasing a resin to soothe our pain.
James Hillman taught you the Soul dives deep, inside
the molten core, while Spirit’s like a rocket’s red glare.
Poetry was your form of spiritual practice, diving
and soaring to find the balance of longing and hope.
At the bright red stop sign of reality, you clapped
those ruby slippers and raced off, like a fire truck,
to rust-shaded Mars, or, if held by gravity and duty,
to Uluru in Australia’s fiery desert, just to escape
into the longer wavelengths of a cardinal sunset.
Drawn by heated visions of desire, you descended
into Hades’ realm, but spurned the pomegranate.
Returning, you followed your heart, throwing
caution into that red wheelbarrow, where icebox
plums lie underneath a mound of scarlet berries.
Spiritually naked, you got sunburned and delirious,
but it didn’t matter, since that way led to answers.
Crowing like a rooster, you became the Red Queen
in Wonderland, dancing madly in a lobster quadrille,
requesting that all roses be painted your special hue.
During this visit, the Cook baked you a cake,
with cayenne, redcurrants, and cranberry icing.
Finally, it was time to go – entering an antique
red phone box, morphing into Wonder Woman,
with tomato-colored boots and the Lasso of Truth,
you’ve left behind your poems to guide us forward.