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
Ferguson, Race, Privilege and Life in a Police State
Was inspired by seeing Jarret Middleton's thoughts about the lack of charges brought against Darren Wilson, the officer in Ferguson, Missouri, who fatally shot Michael Brown, a young black man whose...
501. Hawthorne Presence
WooHoo! The last 2014 August Poetry Postcard! (See all here.) And with only 221 days until the next call goes out. Hawthorn Presence uses an image I took on my cellphone of the house Denise Levertov...
Cover Poem Writing Exercise (Rewrite, New Arrangement)
Often times I’ll see a poem, or in the case below, one is sent to me, and feel that it needs updating, or could stand to be altered to fit the conditions of my particular place and time while yet...
500. Passing Lane
Passing Lane is another 2014 August Postcard Poem, but this one reflects a life firmly back home after my visit to Mexico, firmly into the routine of taking walks in my Hillman City/Seward Park...
Upcoming Readings
I have been working like a dog on the Cascadia Poetry Anthology, Make It True the last few months, but the last few days especially and we're almost done. It's been a joy to work with Nadine...
499. Literary Bruxism
Driving the Redwood Highway is one of the most wonderful road trips I could ever imagine. Starting from Grants Pass, Oregon, stopping at Dutch Bros coffee to get an Irish Creme latté, you soon head...
498. Depth Untended
Sam Hamill on Denise Levertov
Amalio Madueño, the great Taos poet whom I met while attending the legendary Taos Poetry Circus for three years in the late 90s, came to Seattle Labor Day weekend to attend Sam Hamill's book release...
497. Levertov Butterfly Nation
Not too many postcard poems from 2014 left. (Whew!) This one features another Germán Montalvo image and is an homage to Denise Levertov. Long live the organic! (Well, until it decomposes.) A link to...
496. The Occasional Chicharrón
496. The Occasional Chicharrón has more Congress and Puebla reflections, another reference to Vargas Lugo’s butterfly nation flags and the impending USAmerican football season, the advent of which...
For Chick Corea
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/chick-corea-obit-1127283/ “Nobody was more open, more finely tuned to the moment…” quote from John Mayer, Rolling Stone obituary.
Andrew Schelling Interview (The Facts at Dog Tank Spring)
I have known Andrew Schelling since he and Anne Waldman visited the original SPLAB in Auburn in 1997, giving a reading there 6 days after their dear friend Allen Ginsberg died. I have interviewed...
Ian Boyden’s Name as Fundamental Pattern (Reads from A Forest of Names)
This post has been updated to include video from the January 22, 2021 talk: I met Ian Boyden about ten or so years ago through our mutual friend Sam Hamill and we'll always be marked by that...
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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