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PAUL E NELSON

516. Breakfast Special

More Salish art (one of my favorite card images) and a little piece of Wanda Coleman’s fire, in which you don’t eliminate clichés, per se, but “twist” them. Also, a nod to two different Benny Goodman/Charlie Christian tunes, Breakfast Feud and Air Mail...

Barthes on Trump

Give Judd Legum credit for using French Philosopher Roland Barthes (dead since 1980) to better understand the ascendancy of Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump. An article in ThinkProgress digs up some Barthes material from 1957 on the difference between...

Very Serious & Full of Vegetables

I FINALLY finished Crowded by Beauty, the wonderful biography of Philip Whalen. David Schneider brings a Zen perspective to chronicle the life of a poet who, along with Gary Snyder and Lew Welch, was considered one of the NW Beat poets. A great review of the book is...

Gemini GEL, Rouen Cathedral, Seriality

In D.C. to visit my oldest daughter, or “My Kid the Journalist” as I tend to refer to her when I am sharing her articles on Facebook, I was delighted to find that my visit coincided with an exhibition at the National Gallery that promised to be of great...

27. Hanging Leaves

Am working on a new series of poems, a couple of which I’ve read out at local open mics. Not ready yet to talk about them lest their shape be bent by what someone might say, but am up tonight in advance of a trip to D.C. to visit my Kid the Journalist. Sometimes...