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
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512. Whale Poker
This poem reminds me of the on and off dialog I have been having with a Canadian poet who is down on post-modernism because much of it is: “gibberish” in his view, but whose own work is clichéd and...
American Sentences is Published!
On the 60th anniversary of the Beat Generation coming out party, the Six Gallery reading, my 14+ year project American Sentences made it into the world as a published book. That copies were shipped...
Eileen Myles in Seattle
She's apparently in the literary "mainstream" now, according to The Guardian in a typo-laden, but important piece dated Oct 1, 2015, but Eileen Myles has been a real writer, with tremendous depth...
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.