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PAUL E NELSON

Last of the 2014 American Sentences

Tomorrow marks 14 years of a daily writing practice of American Sentences. I started January 1, 2001, and when I get mine done tomorrow I will have written AT LEAST 5,110. You can read more about the form here. Someone commented recently that, “for a guy who...

Top Ten Posts of 2014

I did this last year, a post of the top ten posts/pages of the year. I excluded American Sentences and all individual pages associated with that daily practice and also Organic Poetry and individual essays under that rubric. I’ve also included only two of the...

After The Japanese 9-12

When one writes poetry from the practice of outside, you can go back and look at poems 10 months old and marvel at the consciousness there because in a way, it’s not you. As drummer Hamid Drake told me after a legendary concert with William Parker and the late...

R.I.P. Ralph Maud (1928-2014)

On December 11, 2014, Cascadia lost one of its most important scholars when Ralph Maud died a couple of weeks short of his 86th birthday. He was three days older than my Dad who also died this year, but it was his interest in Charles Olson that connected us and his...

Cuba Libre

I had just dropped off my daughter Ella Roque at her Spanish immersion pre-school and parked in front of my favorite juice bar when the top of the hour radio headlines broadcast that President Obama would be announcing a shift in U.S.-Cuba relations. I called my...