Paul E Nelson

Some February American Sentences

Splabman — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 01:41:43 +0000

A form Allen Ginsberg invented to “Americanize” haiku, these are snapshots of the moment written by Paul E Nelson, one a day, for over eleven years. These are a sampling from most Februaries of the practice. More info at www.AmericanSentences.com. Below see the email exchange with people entrusted to manage Allen Ginsberg’s literary archives.

02.09.01 – One small spat & you reconstruct front room into bedroom-in-exile.

02.08.02 – Next to condom dispenser is written: This is the worst gum ever.

2.01.03 – 1st Israeli astronaut immolates over Palestine, Texas.

2.27.04 – Mother gives birth to six within a minute – like a popcorn popper.

2.15.06 – Do you remember the time when shoes lasted longer than shoelaces?

2.09.07 – Steve’s Civil Service motto: Why work for an asshole when you can be one?

2.16.08 – Today Pop tells me: I can’t complain, then he says the weather sucks.

2.23.09 – UNFAIR say the cat’s eyes – feather toy on the other side of the spokes.

2.10.10 – Sign in Charles Potts’ kitchen window: Loose women tightened here.

2.27.11 – I don’t remember what year it was Pop stopped smiling in photographs.

—–Original Message—–

From: Paul Nelson [mailto:pen@speakeasy.net]
Sent: Thursday, May 05, 2005 3:14 PM
To: info@allenginsberg.org
Subject: American Sentences

Dear AG people, I am a fan of Allen’s who interviewed him once. I’d like to have any information on American Sentences you can provide. Having written them daily for 5 years, I am charged with presenting a paper on this form in September. Any clues?

Thanks, Paul Nelson
–
Global Voices Radio
SPLAB!

Subject: RE: American Sentences
From: “info”
Date: Mon, 9 May 2005
13:46:21 -0400
To: “Paul Nelson”

Dear Paul Nelson,

Sorry I’m just now getting back to you. I was digging around for something useful to send your way, but haven’t been successful. Haiku inspired using american diction. They evolved out of Haiku, but don’t adhere to the 17 syllable structure. That’s why he calls them what he does, and not Haiku. He does keep to the contrast structure: close up/long view and then what bring it all together old pond (far) the frog(near) jumped in, kerplunk (ties them together) Loosely that’s his angle on these, and you probably well know that. If I can come up with something a bit more, I’ll by all means send it your way.

Cheers, Peter Hale

Pig War Residency

Splabman — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 16:52:32 +0000

Jan 28, 2012

Half Stripes, Half Jack

My residency here at the Whiteley Center ends tomorrow, alas. What a tremendous place to think, write &c.

Sure, the photos give you a sense of that (my Pig War research photo album on FB) but I am so pleased with what I did here on Pig War: http://paulenelson.com/pig-war/ This is the continuation of the serial poem that started with A Time Before Slaughter and includes Northwest history.

Thank you Mike Michael Vouri, Kathy Cowell FHL & SICA’s Latifah Taormina and Lorraine Tedrow. Thank you Gerry Jameson and Sam Hamill. Thanks also to Doe Bay resort & retreat for their support of my May writing retreat there.

Grandma's Cove

Tara Hardy Fundraiser 2.23.12

Splabman — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 20:56:10 +0000

from Daemond Arrindell:

Hi everyone,

Tara Hardy

Two months ago, our dear friend and loved writer Tara Hardy went to the emergency room. She was extremely fatigued and little red spots were appearing on her legs and cheeks. When doctors told her that the platelets were low in her blood, so low that it was a miracle that her brain didn’t suddenly hemorrhage, she found herself with a sudden life threatening (but un-diagnosed) condition.Being both stubborn and proud, Tara told only close friends and struggled to pay for mounting medical bills on a poet’s salary. She is still without a diagnosis, but in a dire medical struggle and her savings is gone.

On February 23rd, at the Fremont Abbey, Tara’s friends and colleagues will host a benefit to raise funds. BOOST: Poetry to Uplift Your Spirits will feature a line-up of Tara’s nearest and dearest, reading feel-good poems for this great cause. We do hope you’ll join us there!

An important note:
The money raised from this show will help greatly. However, it’s not enough. We need to raise $10,000 to help Tara with one year of medical care. You can make a donation today, right on this page. You can also post an encouraging message. We believe that helps too.

Thank you for your support, and we hope to see you on February 23rd.

Kristina Armenakis
Daemond Arrindell
Patch Avery
Greg B
Ela Barton
Sara Brickman
Debbie Carlsen
Elaina Ellis
Karen Finneyfrock
Andrea Gibson
Tara Hardy
Maya Hersh
Kathleen Nacozy
Sonya Renee
Casey Tonnelly

Four Hoarse Men Sound Poetry

Splabman — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 03:43:29 +0000

Greg Bem, Jason Conger, Joe Chiveney and I have been rehearsing a Sound Poem originally done by the Four Horsemen: bp nichol, Steve McCaffery, Rafael Barreto-Rivera and Paul Dutton. (Their version here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahUdQd_YtwM )

Read the comments section there and you get a sense what people think about this kind of poetry, but I think there is something valuable in attempting (sometimes) to communicate in a way that transcends words.

So, for the January edition of The Breadline, we performed as the Four Hoarse Men and it was recorded by Raanan David and posted here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0Hyv_Tf_O8

Here’s the score:

4 Hoarse Men Sound Poetry Score
Instructions: replicating the unconscious, ecstasy & the dreamlike. 2 conducts. Each scream is 5-6 seconds, facilitated by conductor. Each segment 15-20 seconds.
	1 – Jason	2 – Paul	3 – Joe	4 – Greg	COMMENTS
1	SCREAM 1
2	E e e e e e e e	CONDUCTS	ggg rrr www L L L L L L Z Z Z Z		(2 & 4 silent)
3	SCREAM 2
4	Growling animal, then popping sounds			Choking sounds, gagging lip pops	(2 & 4 silent)
5	SCREAM 3
6		Vowels grunted with tongue		CH CH CH UH UH UH NK NK NK TU TU TU AA AA AA	(1 & 3 silent)
7	SCREAM 4
8		E E E E E E K K K K K T T T T T T D D D D D	EEE intermittently E e e e e e		(1 & 4 silent)
9	SCREAM 5
10	OOOOOOOOH (as in sue)	OOOOO (turns sexual ecstasy and relief, more quiet)	Anthemic O	OOOOO turning to animal sound
11	SCREAM 6 (End)

I’d welcome your comments.

Lost in the Wilderness

Splabman — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 06:10:25 +0000

Yong Chun Kim

Ever since my own LOST episode (details linked here) I have always followed stories of people lost in the wilderness around Seattle. I thought Yong Chun Kim was a goner for sure, when he was found on Tuesday, January 17, 2012, in Mt. Rainier National Park. Read his story here: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2017263703_snowshoer18m.html

Who doesn’t love the burning money part of the story?

The story of a different Kim, James, did not turn out so well over five years ago. Meredith and I drove that Bear Camp Road in summertime 2012 and saw new signs warning people not to take the road in winter. It is a remarkable road.

James Kim

And the Jeff Graves story was happening at the same time I was writing the final part of my Slaughter book, Elegies for Slaughter, and was the subject of #6, and since the line breaks will be mangled by WordPress, I’ll post a PDF here and the poem below: Elegy for Slaughter VI.

VI
The cedars above
the base of the cliff
in the shadow of Tahoma
are that much more impressive
when the fog lifts
in June but June

is still mountain winter
and winter forever for unlucky
hikers.

Some will never airport rendezvous
w/ seven yr old daughters
eyes fixed on ancient cedars,
while f a l l i n g.

One muscular cedar
a model for you
in your flight from Slaughter

flexed, three points curled toward
Jupiter.

In our own weak way
we hang on
so concerned with survival

we don’t recognize each struggle
conquered, each shadow bit
part played

IS the blossoming
until we wonder why
those petals are falling
wonder how the wrinkles
the gray and how large are
those things yesterday were just
tiny cedar cones

or little girls waiting for reunion with Daddy.

Fate’s bent away from heroes
sometimes as much as an out
stretched hand

in summer that suddenly becomes winter
in the shadow of Tahoma.

¡Mi dios me ahorra!
¡No estoy listo para morir!
¡Dejarme por favor
ver a mi hija
una más vez!

We all smile at the flash
all who began in ecstasy
all who recognize a real hero
until winter makes it moot.

Burn a snip of cedar
petition antepasados
but who turns
back time?

How soon after
one large fall
does a heart stop beating?

Blossom at her feet
or in her memory.

Blossom at the bottom
of the cliff
or at the top of the Olympic
edge, still holding

foot hold, hand hold, or the view
of evening constellations. Sure, Saturn
in the sky this week

but at one time you held on
to that night swan

and no one hears the little detonations
like no one heard the fog-muffled
cry from the edge of the cliff
where Jeff Graves hiked the Eagle Peak Trail
in the shadow of Tahoma
not trying to become the newest blur
in the oldest constellation
that could have been you.

City of Poets

Splabman — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 04:00:20 +0000

C.A Conrad w/ Furries

It was a phrase used by C.A. Conrad when he visited Seattle and did a reading at SPLAB. He said he loved being part of our City of Poets. Our current Board President, Eze Anamalechi likes the idea of a Poetic Commons.

Another Board Member, Joe Chiveney, suggests we have Saturday workshops where the critique goes deeper than the Tuesday night Living Room circles.

One guy who took the Organic Poetry course at the Richard Hugo House, Aaron Kokorowski, wants to know if a takeoff on Warhol’s Factory project is possible. His equation SPLAB + Factory = SPLACtory.

Nadine Maestas wants to do a more academic look at Allen Ginsberg during the Ginsberg Marathon.

Brian McGuigan wants to throw a poet’s party with “the ones that write poems about salmon and death and email and shit I don’t even understand, small press poets, homemade chapbook poets, everyone, and come get to know each other, sort of like a mixer.”

You get the idea. Now, it’s your turn.

We’re turning SPLAB over to a collective, a poetic commons, a City of Poets. With the exception of two dates in the Fall, the 2012/2013 SPLAB season is yours to design. It requires a commitment, but that’s to be determined. We want to stick with writers and our bias is poets. We won’t put up with poetasters, but do want folks who want to grow in their own work. Please bring a short poem for the Living Room at SPLAB, 7PM on Tuesday, January 31 and come to tell us how you’d like to see SPLAB evolve; what project you have dreamed of doing with poets.

SPLAB is at 3651 S Edmunds in the former Columbia School. Just off Metro’s 7 or 8, a couple of blocks from the Columbia City Link Light Rail station with plenty of free parking, join the commons. We’ll also talk about Cascadia.

Angel Hack (Haibun de la Serna #4)

Splabman — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 16:49:28 +0000

Angel Hack by Paul Nelson 3

Angel Hack

Never forget that it was an angel that invented swords.
Ramón Gomez de la Serna

Never forget it is the oldest Bodhisattva carries one aflame in his right hand carve a slice off duality. Never forget a sword’s a scalpel can hack at nafsu, that which fosters soul erasure, hack at the snag stifles your hike up Entrance Mountain, hack to clear a path as King Solomon might machete as mere threat to find a way into co-mercy. Nature sometimes needs a knife now & again, give gristle to the dog, liberate axis & om-fire or simply to slice up the mango. You might like guayaba pastelitos. You might be sickened by what antepasados are urging you to cut just this side of Obstruction or may be Frank Morgan alto-honking the daylight out of front row yuppies in full babble, George Cables right behind him as he was with Art Pepper on the prison tune, The Trip. Why did they chop off the missionaries heads the child asked, but they were no mere visitors, only the first line of colonialists whose angels have no swords whose single god has a beard and vendetta, whose trick is stealing fire, whose exceptional American time is running out.

Rocket’s red glare.
Colors don’t run but burn
sliced by Manjushri’s flaming saber.

8:34A – 11.29.10
Doe Bay

(Nafsu: The Indonesian dictionary definition of this
very common word is “natural appetite or desire”.)

Dragonfly Resurrection (Haibun de la Serna #31)

Splabman — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 08:51:21 +0000

Dragonfly Resurrection by Paul Nelson 3

Dragonfly Resurrection

Horse flies are smudges on the air.
– Ramón Gomez de la Serna

Dragonflies are silent fireworks. Into the heart of a carnivore we go & see her arrive 30mph on the solstice see her stalk the rushes & sedges recon the ponds work the grass tips maybe let the fresh sperm be scooped out to mate again maybe see you out thousands of individual eyes maybe shoot up to spy another dragonfly 125 feet above.
Dragonfly older than dinosaur cardinal meadowhawk filigree skimmers western forktail coal-fronted threadtail Apache dancer Aztec dancer immortal unreliable more spark than flame more action than lengua mala more meat eater than lilac-sniffer more drunk than your last hallucination four wing’d independent flight.

Gauzy wings glitter
in summer solstice
sun.

7:04P – 6.25.11

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2015387489_solstice22m.html

American Poetry Culture & Chinese Culture Xi Chuan

Splabman — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 17:35:48 +0000

Xi_Chuan_1.9.12_Pike_Place

Xi Chuan gave a stellar reading at the Seattle Central library on Monday, January 9, 2012. Chris Higashi was a gracious host and Paul Manfredi a fine reader of Xi Chuan’s work in English, (translated by Lucas Klein) reading poems after the Chinese. Xi Chuan’s NW poem, written in Victoria, BC, featured a lot of mold and really nailed the spirit of the region. Look for the new book Notes on the Mosquito this spring courtesy of New Directions.

Xi_Chuan_1.9.12_Kerry_Park

The Q & A session after the reading was remarkable due to Xi Chuan’s thoughts about contemporary Chinese culture, saying that tourists want to visit the “old China”, that it has been part of Chinese culture for a long time to bulldoze most of the buildings of previous dynasties and that there is a symmetry issue with adding cars and roads, but leaving pre-auto landscapes. He said modern American cities like New York, Chicago and Seattle had been the model for China’s building spree, but now it is Paris and London. He kept saying “it’s complicated” a negative capability reflected in his poetry, a quality I appreciate. He also answered a question about memorizing old poetry, but gave a long chunk of an old poem that, even in the Chinese, did not seem easy to memorize and recite. He knows his stuff and related well to the older Chinese man who asked the question. The library event was after a long tour of Seattle that I took him on. He was able to recognize the Lenin statue from the back and was honored to see the graves of Bruce Lee and Denise Levertov.

Xi_Chuan_1.9.12_Troll

One thing Xi Chuan could not believe about American poetry culture (and American culture in general) was the $120 million dollar gift by Ruth Lilly to the Poetry Foundation. They built a poetry palace in my home town, Chicago, with some of that prozac money. I told Xi Chuan about my essay on American Poetry Culture, linked here: http://paulenelson.com/organic-poetry/changing-a-culture/ I’d welcome your feedback on the piece. It will be published as part of the new edition of Organic Poetry due this year from Apprentice House. This kind of thing can only happen in America, he said.

Xi Chuan 1.9.12 at Bruce Lee's grave

49th Parallel Blues

Splabman — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 15:17:35 +0000

See me read it with Jim O’Halloran on flute:

https://www.facebook.com/paul.nelson/posts/165440583559985

Line breaks here are not right, but what the hell? It’s #49 in a series of 99 haibun inspired by Ramon Gomez de la Serna.

49. 49th Parallel Blues (After Nate Mackey)

The function of waves is to bring the salvage from shipwrecks.
– Ramón Gomez de la Serna

Went back to the book, had to flesh out what 49 was. Was a parallel, was a universe. A series of them. A quag was where they were headed to, a world without soul or where soul was weak or with held w/ religious zeal. Back to the book for a whiff of an old song sung new, a star-eyed babe made real again out of meat and memory. Star dust and comet stuff. A tail raised at the end of an age end of yet another yuga.
A brother lost, perhaps for a time, yet another brother made up of mud, not as mad, almost as innocent. A bother made up of blood’s memory a memento mori of sorts and still seeking sentience often lost between legs (or ahead of them), lost in the reeds as if the product of a bad shank or grief’s weight abandoned finally shook loose how torque lost its pull, latter day Torquemadas lost their power, laughter cast its healing glance upon the mercenaries and left mercy.
Mercy’s mission mumbled in the round, widdershins. Mercy’s mumble infinite (or so it seemed) redolent, or so we saw, radiant or so the jewels in the net of Indra surmised. If it was quag to which we were headed we’d brake, we’d wrestle a wrench away from monkeys or from the late capitalist hammer squadron. We could smell the quag coming and wanted none, wd find the wealth of wet cement to lay our head on, wd listen for dreams just this side of bricks and cayenne weapons way away from any gumbo. Where there’d be quag we’d beckon mercy w/ songs mumbled at first, right up past the gut’s obstruction then bellowed into latihan air like a bapak wd, blown like Birks fat cheeks a monk’s last remission a bird song hurled at the oncoming winds.

He’d sing it three times
and each time the word
mercy caught a wave, wd
begin to stick.