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
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....
Puget SOUND Poetry
Nico Vassilakis is curating a night of Puget Sound Poetry, Friday, March 23, 2012 7-9P at Vermillion, 1508 11th Av, as a prelude to the Cascadia Poetry Festival. Including: Cristin Miller Molly Mac...
Ella Roque Nelson, a quarter-Cuban, part-Irish St. Paddy’s Day Baby
When Meredith and I learned that the baby she was carrying was a girl, she started suggesting first names. She would say a name and I would react immediately as to whether I would like it or not,...
Final Cascadia Poetry Festival Preparation
Here are a few highlights, with links, to events of the Cascadia Poetry Festival. Please be aware that Gold Passes are now extremely limited and they may be sold out by March 24th. Guarantee a spot...
Enbridge Pipeline Poetry Resistance
This in from Christine LeClerc about an amazing piece of resistance to the tar-sands pipeline in poetry form. The poem is a great deal longer than the proposed pipeline and the pdf worth...
Cascadia Poetry Interview
Crystal Curry is writing a piece on the Cascadia Poetry Festival and had a few questions for me. I thought I'd get the whole thing online here so you can see some of the background of the fest and...
Hugo House looking for teachers
Email from Brian McGuigan of the Richard Hugo House: Dear Teachers: I’m writing to request proposals for summer quarter classes at Hugo House, running from July 9 through August 19. Click Here...
puget SOUND POETRY
puget SOUND POETRY Vermillion March 23rd 7-9pm Including: Cristin Miller Molly Mac Fedyk Ezra Mark Crag Hill Nico Vassilakis Joe Milutis Four Hoarse Men: Greg Bem, Jason Conger, Paul Nelson...
March American Sentences
It's March already, more evidence the drug of our time is velocity. So, I went back to Marches of the past for some American Sentences that you may enjoy. This time, I've added some commentary to...
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...
Tim McNulty Interview (Olympic National Park Natural History)
Interview with Tim McNulty on Olympic National Park: A Natural History 4th Edition. Recorded Sunday, October 28, 2018, at the home of Tim & Mary McNulty, Lost Mountain, WA There is something...
How does one make literary art about this time in history that avoids rhetoric and facile political positioning in this era of the spectacle? How does one avoid being consumed by the simultaneous collapse of so many systems — some being eviscerated by people in positions designed to protect such systems? Deborah Poe has some idea based on her submission to the upcoming anthology Winter in America (Still.
Deborah is the author of several books of poetry including keep, Elements, and Our Parenthetical Ontology, as well as a novella in verse, Hélène. Her visual works–video poems and handmade book objects–have been exhibited throughout the US. She lives on stolen Coast Salish land, specifically the ancestral homeland of the Duwamish, Suquamish, Stillaguamish, and Muckleshoot People.
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