Web Banner Life As Rehearsal for the Poem Cascadian Zen Basket 4

life as rehearsal for the poem (LARFP) cascadian zen basket four: Borders Without Binaries

A five week online (Zoom) workshop best suited for continuing participants and more experienced poets (open to open form) in workshops facilitated by Cascadia Poetics Lab and Poetry Postcard Fest Co-Founder Paul E Nelson. Participate in reading and discussion of foundational essays, interviews, listening and other assignments, as well as spontaneous poetry composition exercises, in the first of three five week courses to happen before the next postcard season. In Winter 20205, we will explore passages from Cascadian Zen Vol 2 – Basket Four, and related texts and assignments. How can one’s poetics be a cosmology and how can one maintain some experience of the Poetry Postcard Fest, & allow one’s life as a creative participant in the world to rise in one’s personal hierarchy of duties/activities? How is the projective poem an antidote to Silicon Valley attention fracking? $250 for each five week session per person, scholarships are available. Sunday nights, 3-5pm PDT (January 5, 12, 19, 26, and February 2, 2025) by invitation only. Preference given to participants who wish to commit to both five-week sessions in the 2025 season.

January 5, 12, 19, 26, 2025
February 2, 2025

Link to purchase Cascadian Zen Volume 2

by invitation only. Zoom link: (to be announced)

Course Materials Week One
(Sunday, January 5, 2025, 3-5 pm PDT)

Write: Winter in America (Again (exercise)

Read: Cascadian Zen Vol. I, Basket Three (Pages 336-356)

Read: 17 Reasons Why Steven Fama Loves McClure

Read: Wisconsin Wicca (for the Solstice)

Listen: Winter in America (Again playlist

Read/Create: A Personal Universe Deck

Write: A poem using your P.U.D.

It takes a good two hours to create a personal universe deck. You do not have to decorate it right away, but having the deck and creating it in the sacred way McClure explains it is key. Done right, this will be a resource for you for the rest of your life and will initiate you into deeper realms of your self. No rules here. It can be an American Sentence, a haiku, a sonnet, a free write, a prose poem or a phrase acrostic. Just be sure to use words from your Personal Universe Deck.

Course Materials Week Two
(Sunday, January 12, 2025, 3-5 pm PDT)

READ: Cascadian Zen Volume I Original Mind Basket (pages 357-376)

LISTEN or READ: Jane Hirshfield Interview

READ: The Meat Reason of the Last Beat

WATCH: Michael McClure talk about Zen and Dharma Devotions

READ: Pinchbeck on AG

WATCH: 2025 video from IG Also this on Elizabeth May’s response to D.T.

WRITE: Prose Sonnet You can use your Personal Universe Deck to start the poem, when you have a pause in the composition process, or as a ritual/restriction, adding a rule like One PUD word per line &c. The prose sonnet should have lines that go from margin to margin and 13 to 15 lines. You can tighten up the margins and having the justified lineation, rather than left if that looks good to you.

If you find the energy lingers after writing the first prose sonnet, try writing several. That the PUD aids in adding the quality of surprise mind is one of its greatest gifts. Also, begin to set the table for your daysong on or near Feb 1, the actual day of Imbolc being the most potent. The numerological significance of 2025 could serve as a scaffolding for the daysong. Consider.