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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The Future of Storytelling, Puebla, Mexico
This past August I had the good fortune to attend the 14th Subud World Congress in Puebla, Mexico, or the Congreso Mundial, as the locals called it. There are numerous stories I could tell about my...
After The Japanese 13-16
This latest installment of After The Japanese, poems written after the classic Japanese poetry anthology, is below. Inspirations coming, as usual, from a wide variety of sources such as the...
Last of the 2014 American Sentences
Tomorrow marks 14 years of a daily writing practice of American Sentences. I started January 1, 2001, and when I get mine done tomorrow I will have written AT LEAST 5,110. You can read more about...
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.