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
American Sentences May & June 2014
OK OK, here is my latest harvest of American Sentences. They are taken from the middle of March to today and though the time that my Father died in Chicago. Click here for the essay about the...
Red Sky Poetry Theater
It's odd how death makes us pause and reconsider our own lives. When my Father died, I got the hunch within a week or so to look at our bloodline and traced his maternal line to England in 1450. My...
Father’s Day/My Model of Illness (Consciousness)
Since my Dad died on May 11, there have been a lot of thoughts of him that have gone through my head, as you can imagine. With the help of Subud and the latihan kedjiwaan I have been able to do...
Hailey, ID, Pound House, Bowe Bergdahl
Mer and I recently returned from a mammoth road trip from Seattle to Minneapolis, Chicago, DC, Pittsburgh, Decatur, Indiana, Chicago, Minneapolis, Sutherland, Nebraska, Denver, Laramie and Hailey,...
Clyfford Still Museum
As part of our marathon road trip, Mer, Ella and I stopped in Denver specifically for the purpose of visiting the Clyfford Still Museum. One of the most unique painters in USAmerican history, Still...
Loose in Cascadia
I have left a couple of browser tabs open on my mac for a couple of weeks now because of their relevance to my ongoing cultural investigation of Cascadia. Both have to do with a study by two...
American Sentences for Pop
I read Nine Sonnets for Pop and a few of these 17 syllable poems at my Dad's grave today as his remains were interred at the family burial plot in Elmhurst, Illinois. My siblings shared some stories...
Pop at Aunt Barbara’s Coffin
My Aunt Barbara Rose O'Connell died on Super Bowl Sunday, 2007, and there were ceremonies in Glendora, California, where she lived most of her life and outside of Chicago, where she was born and...
George Stanley on Innovation
One of the most powerful events of the recent Cascadia Poetry Festival (Cascadia II) was the panel: Cascadian Poetics: Innovations from Here. (Video of the panel here.) Nadine Maestas facilitated...
Paul E. Nelson Sr. Dead at 85
Born in Council Bluffs, Iowa, on December 27, 1928, Paul Everett Nelson Senior died today in his sleep in his home on the Northwest Side of Chicago at the age of 85. He is survived by his wife,...
Poetics as Cosmology
Poetics as Cosmology (Intro to Spontaneous Composition) A six week online (Zoom) workshop for people who have had a little experience in spontaneous poetry composition and want more. Join SPLAB and...
Rattlecast #54 (Watch the Interview)
Back in March before we had a sense of how COVID-19 the novel Coronavirus would change our lives forever, Rattle Magazine's Tim Green invited me to sit down (via Skype) for an interview about my...
Buckminster Fuller
As a fan of the Black Mountain School of poetry, which was inspired by the revolutionary poetics of Charles Olson, the last rector of the famed outside educational institution in North Carolina in...
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.