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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American Sentences-June, July
I told this story on Facebook last week: After a ride on the 358, I get where John Burgess is coming from with his Aurora bus updates. I sat down in the back row next to this guy who started talking...
Tin Umbrella Suggests Hillman City’s Coming Up
Mer and I moved from Columbia City to Hillman City in October 2011. The neighborhood just south of Columbia City, it's still more diverse than Columbia City and (as of this writing) has none of the...
Notes on The Practice of Outside: Robin Blaser’s Divine Real
Notes on The Practice of Outside: Robin Blaser’s Divine Real (pdf) Before I knew Robin Blaser’s work, I knew of Robin Blaser, having found out about him through my early poetry investigations of...
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.