Paul E Nelson presenting at Cascadia Poetry Festival 8, photo by Leszek Chudzinski
“Paul formally received the Mahayana precepts of Zen Buddhism in 2023, becoming a lay practitioner within the tradition, but I believe he had long lived in accord with them. His poetry, in its sensitivity, its humility, and its deep listening, embodies practice-realization — the understanding that practice and awakening are not separate. His writing was his zazen. This collection, FLEXIBLE MIND, is more than a book. It is a continuation of that practice. A testament to a man who lives by attention, who bows to language but does not cling to it, who seeks what lays beyond words by walking straight into them.”– Kosho Itagaki, Soto Zen Priest
60. Hymn to Indian Plum
60. Hymn to Indian Plum (pdf)
54. Black Dragon Year
54. Black Dragon Year (see 54. Black Dragon Year for proper lineation) The heart measures in blood everything that happens. – Ramón Gomez de la Serna The dragon stays stuck to lampposts at the...
HARVEST THE ARTS! Mother’s Day Edition :: JAZZ & POETRY
2811 Mount Rainier Drive South Seattle, WA 98144 (206) 722-7209 3:30pm, Mother's Day, Sunday, May 20, 2012 Donations Graciously Accepted. Refreshments Provided.A collaborative program of poetry,...
Paul Nelson Interviewed by Steve Barker
My gratitude for Steve Barker for taking time to look over my websites and conduct an intelligent interview about my poetry, about SPLAB and some interviews that I have conducted over the years....
More 2012 American Sentences
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...
Igniting the Galaxies: Cascadian Ecopoetry
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...
Intro to Reissue of McClure’s Specks
It was on my 50th birthday that I received an email from Garry Thomas Morse of Talon Books in Vancouver asking if I would be interested in writing the introduction to a reissue of Michael McClure's...
Before Pigs
The opening poem from my current project: Pig War: & Other Songs of Cascadia. Text, with linebreaks fouled up by Wordpress, is here: https://paulenelson.com/pig-war/before-pigs/
53. Nothing Death
53. Nothing Death A kiss is nothing in brackets. – Ramón Gomez de la Serna A poem’s nothing on paper. A stellar jay’s a punk in a western vista. Any death’s an opportunity. One wd sing his pop a...
61. Meat Again
Nothing forgets us more quickly than a barstool. Ramon Gomez de la Serna the sheer terror of being forced into incarnation in accordance with one’s will one’s agreement with the single intelligence....
Unconventional Nelson
10.20.2018 - I told the UPS clerk my Mom’s first name was unconventional. #AmericanSentences When Bhakti and I were in Chicago last September, my Ma, Lesbia Nelson, was having lower back pain and so...
Feast on TISH & Cascadia
There is a great review of two door-stopping books of poetry in the new BC Booklook. The subjects are Daphne Marlatt and Fred Wah, two members of the legendary TISH group in Vancouver, BC, in the...
American Prophets Pre-Sales
SPLAB turns 25 on December 14, 2018, and we'll be celebrating in the town where SPLAB was founded, Auburn, Washington, the former Slaughter. I am asking readers of this blog and supporters of...
The interview I conducted with Sam O’Hana, a Ph.D. student at CUNY, is immensely critical and immensely validating for the work we do at the Cascadia Poetics Lab. At its core, the discussion is about whether writing is for people of means, or if it can be people who have skill and something to say. It means the literary gatekeepers have failed us and have a role in perpetuating neoliberalism in North America which has paved the way for authoritarianism. The interview is available as a podcast here and as a YouTube video here. Below, I have pasted in the transcript and here is my introduction to Sam O’Hana and his topic.