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
Another DaySong (1980)
Another DaySong (1980) By Paul E Nelson Alongside The Day Song of Casa del Colibiri, Another Day Song (1980) is a fantastic meditation throughout the day via insight and poetry. Nelson's works...
Postcards from Here, Postcards from Mapes Creek
I had no idea when Bhakti Watts and I moved to Rainier Beach in 2017 how much we would love this neighborhood, how much it would give back to us and shape our lives. And yes, we've each survived...
A Journal of the Plague Years
I like to think of it as projective journalism. Maybe it's becoming a lost art to write and publish history with deep perception hours after events happen, but Susan Zakin and her crew at Journal of...
DaySong Miracle (Past 62) Profiled on SICA-USA
I was delighted to see the SICA-USA blog post written about my new book DaySong Miracle (Past 62). I knew it was coming, but to read the way my Subud brother Jim O'Halloran handled the information...
Memory’s Vault (book)
I had the good fortune last Sunday (May 19) to be invited to participate in a reading at Memory's Vault to celebrate the publication of the Empty Bowl book Memory's Vault: The Poetic Heart of Fort...
Larry Lawrence at Jack Straw
Writing a blurb for a friend or associate's book is a difficult task. One has to be compelling, has to have some credibility regarding knowledge of the book's content and has to have a call to act,...
DaySong Miracle (Past 62)
From Greg Bem in Spokane, WA: Greetings from Spokane! I am pleased to announce the third release from Carbonation Press: Paul E. Nelson's DaySong Miracle (Past 62). This small book is available...
Interview with Bill Porter on Dancing with the Dead
Here is the video version of my March 25, 2024 interview with Bill Porter on "Dancing With the Dead: Red Pine and the Art of Translation." We talked about his life, the movie and the film which...
Zoom Interview with Nicholas Gulig on Lorine Niedecker
Imagine growing up a poet in a state like Wisconsin and having to travel to Colorado to learn about the work of Lorine Niedecker, and furthermore to have one’s own consciousness changed by...
Typewriter Poems on Request at SAM’s Remix (Crush)
With my friend, the poet Samar Abulhassan, I'll be typing spontaneous poems on demand for people attending the Seattle Art Museum's popular Remix, Friday, March 29, 2024 from 7-10pm. Really, this...
DaySong Workshops
As you may know, for the last few years I have added a day-long ritual poem writing project to my array of practices. I've come to call these events "daysongs" after the Canto Diurno by the late...
Winter in America (Still call for work
Call for Poems/Prose/ArtI hope this finds you well despite this troubling political time. In response, the editors of the Winter in America anthology series are building a literary and artistic...
Linda Russo on the verdant
As the planet heats up, many animal species are either headed north or going extinct. This makes the work of the poet as witness that much more important. Who is here now? And as the culture becomes...
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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