Cascadia Poetics LAB logo

PAUL E NELSON

Make it True meets MedusarioThank you Paul Constant, at the Seattle Review of Books, for the kind and (I think) perceptive review of an anthology I had a hand in bringing into the world. Make It True meets Medusario is indeed a “mashup” and Constant, who also had kind words about my first book, A Time Before Slaughter ten years ago, notes about the recent anthology:

…A mashup, a joining of two cultures, a fusion of two poetic celebrations into one literary mega-party. Every piece of writing in the book is presented both in English and in Spanish. The poetry is presented facing-page style, with the author’s native language on the leftmost page…

And I appreciate his kind words about one of my haibun in the book:

The book started out as a collaboration idea of José Kozer’s. There was a grant possibility from 4Cuture, thanks to Doreen Mitchum, who has some sense of the work SPLAB has done in the last 26 years. Thomas Walton did the heavy-lifting of editing and finding the brilliant translators in the first place, who deserve a huge amount of credit, Alejandro Carillo and Dana Nelson, as does Lauren Grosskopf of Pleasure Boat Studios, the book designer and publisher. Needless to say this project involved the work of many people working over a long time.

That THIS is the kind of work that builds bridges between cultures needs to be pointed out because of the political situation in which we find ourselves and due to the fact that such efforts are vastly underrated in terms of their significance. I am very proud of this book and grateful for attention by Seattle Review of Books and Paul Constant.

The book is on sale at the publisher’s website: https://pleasureboatstudio.com/make-it-true-meets-medusario/