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
Two Videos (Lyric World Conversation, Roche Memorial)
There are two videos in which Your Humble Narrator plays a role that are well worth watching. The first is an interview with Thomas Hitoshi Pruiksma and Shin Yu Pai on a new series at Town Hall...
Interview with Miriam Nichols on Mechanic of Splendor
Of the post-war North American poets that wrote from a stance of spontaneity, there are few that spring to mind immediately, Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, Jack Spicer, Denise Levertov, Michael...
The MUD Proposal proposal
After writing about being accepted by The Mud Proposal (see: https://paulenelson.com/2020/01/01/the-mud-proposal/) I came across my cover letter for the Mud Proposal: Dear Editors, I am in year...
MLA Seattle Off-Site Reading
I am delighted to be part of a giant mosaic of poets reading on Friday, January 10, 2020, in the MLA Off-Site Reading. The venue is the Town Hall Forum, 1119 8th Avenue, Seattle, WA, 7:30 to 11pm,...
The Mud Proposal
Thanks to Aryanil Mukherjee and Pat Clifford, I am delighted to have work in the latest Mud Proposal. Aryanil is responsible for the Bengali poetry journal Kaurab and curates the Mud Proposal, named...
Three Memorials for Judith Roche
On December 24, 2019, the Seattle Times published its obituary for Judith Roche. An excerpt: “My basic thing is that poetry is approaching the holy and it’s a translation of the sacred and it says...
PoPo Interviews
I am looking to interview at least ten postcard participants in the next few weeks to create some videos for a new PoPo website that will replace the current page on my cluttered personal site....
Make it True meets Medusario Review
Thank you Paul Constant, at the Seattle Review of Books, for the kind and (I think) perceptive review of an anthology I had a hand in bringing into the world. Make It True meets Medusario is indeed...
No Map, No Jud (For Judith Roche)
My elegy for Judith Roche has been published by the South Seattle Emerald: https://southseattleemerald.com/2019/11/24/sunday-stew-no-map-no-jud-for-judith-roche/ See also:...
Bill Mawhinney Bids Adieu to Northwind
I had the good fortune to read AT LEAST three times during Bill Mawhinney's tenure as producer of the monthly Northwind Poetry series in Port Townsend over the last 13 years. That he came out of the...
Memory’s Vault (book)
I had the good fortune last Sunday (May 19) to be invited to participate in a reading at Memory's Vault to celebrate the publication of the Empty Bowl book Memory's Vault: The Poetic Heart of Fort...
Larry Lawrence at Jack Straw
Writing a blurb for a friend or associate's book is a difficult task. One has to be compelling, has to have some credibility regarding knowledge of the book's content and has to have a call to act,...
DaySong Miracle (Past 62)
From Greg Bem in Spokane, WA: Greetings from Spokane! I am pleased to announce the third release from Carbonation Press: Paul E. Nelson's DaySong Miracle (Past 62). This small book is available...
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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