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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2nd Half of 2011 American Sentences
There are still two more sentences for me to write & complete eleven years of the daily practice of writing one American Sentence every day since January 1, 2001. To read more in this form, see:...
Post on Pacific Rim Poetics
For some reason, I did not get my Pacific Rim Poetics essay transferred over from OrganicPoetry.org to this here site. Today I corrected that. Here are the two epigraphs: If I open a magazine of...
American Sentences from 2011
I have begun harvesting my American Sentences from this past year. It's always a blast from my recent past to do this and this is eleven years now of writing one of these 17 syllable poems every...
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.