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
Throwback Thursday
Lost in the Woods edition: See the whole story here: https://paulenelson.com/about/lost-in-the-woods-sept-2000/five-who-survived-wilderness/
537. A Safe Place
Yet another Georgia O’Keeffe image used on the latest poem from the 2015 August Poetry Postcard Fest, and another reference to one of the more grisly events in the summer 2015 European refugee...
Judith Roche Interview
On May 11, 2016, your humble narrator caught up with Seattle poet, teacher and literary curator Judith Roche to discuss her new book All Fire All Water published by Black Heron Press. We sat at the...
New Pageboy Magazine Reviews American Sentences
from Thomas Walton: Greetings Dear Readers of Small Magazines, PageBoy Magazine's eighth issue is now out and available in stores and through our blog at https://pageboymagazine.blogspot.com. Art by...
Swedenborgian Rotarian
Only in Seattle would you get a headline like that. & it was a typical Tuesday (except for one small fact celebrated here), so I woke up and looked at my phone to see if there was any urgent...
536. Jupiter in Virgo
Another Georgia O’Keeffe image used for this latest 2015 August Poetry Postcard and one of the shortest 2015 postcard poems mostly because of the glossy stock and the difficulty in the actual...
Rifkin Meme/ Guaranteed Basic Income
It's a Facebook meme and these are worth the paper they're printed on, but I though this one was pretty good, so I shared it. I'd seen Jeremy Rikin give a lecture at Town Hall, discussing the...
Chronicling Left Egalitarianism
The tab for a certain online newspaper article has been open on my browser since about April 15, when it was published. I moved it over from #3 to #36 today (yep, 36 tabs open right now) and have...
535. Green For Red
Another Georgia O’Keeffe image, this latest August Poetry Postcard Fest poem was sent as prayer for a postcarder in the middle of summer wildfire hell.
No Sonics & the Rising Feminine
Forgive me Sonics fans, but I view the Seattle City Council vote yesterday (5.2.16) as emblematic of everything good about Seattle. The Council voted against a sale of a city street to would-be...
Poetics as Cosmology (Talk given to Cal State L.A., March 21, 2022)
We do what we know before we know what we do. Charles Olson,as quoted by Robert Creeley inpoets of the cities of new york and san francisco 1950-1965 (Dutton ’74). p. 62 This subject is near and...
Proprioception
Ever since Fred Wah mentioned proprioception in an interview we did that was posted on YouTube and made into a podcast, I have been plunged back into a study of this capacity. It's how human and...
Reading w/ Jim O’Halloran Trio
It was a remarkable experience reading my poems with the accompaniment of the Jim O'Halloran Trio on February 25, 2022 at Kezira Café. Jim's a wonderful musician, bandleader and arranger. He...
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.