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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Hillman City Haibun (Walkin’, Lichen)
As I noted in my last haibun post, walks = poetry. If you do not get a poem when walking, you have not walked long enough. Ask Charles Reznikoff, who was well-known for taking walks of 15 to 20...
After The Japanese 33-36
It was interesting when first meeting San Francisco poet Kevin Killian, whose name I would occasionally see on the SUNY-Buffalo poetics listserv years before social media would allow us to keep...
Hillman, Columbia City Lit Crawl
The pub crawl is a tradition that goes back to the 19th century. A group gets together and drinks in a series of bars. Maybe the participants are new to a town. In Australia they had over 4,000...
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.