Get to Know a Local Poet: Paul Nelson

A friend gave me a good piece of advice recently, after a loose bit of snarky judgmental critique flew from my mouth (as it tends to on occasion) regarding a situation that I knew remarkably little about. She said that when trying to make a fairly accurate assessment of a situation, it really helps to be personally involved and invested in it—preferably on an intimate level. I think she was right. Which is why I’m such a fan of Paul Nelson’s poetic monument to Auburn, Washington, "A Time Before Slaughter." 

Akin to the epic poems of William Carlos Williams ("Paterson") and Charles Olsen ("The Maximus Poems"), "A Time Before Slaughter" looks upon the history of a place with a gaze that strives to be both critical and understanding—in equal measure—from the perspective of someone who is personally invested in the actual place. Poet Michael McClure said this about "A Time Before Slaughter": "Here's one more big hunk of the American shoulder. As Olson carved his from the North East, Nelson takes his from the Pacific Northwest. It's beautiful time-space in new words."

Ross McMeekin: Thank you so much, Paul, for agreeing to be a part of our blog series Get to Know a Local Poet, in honor of National Poetry Month.  First off, what are you working on?

Paul Nelson: I'm doing a number of readings and workshops in support of the book I worked on for 12 years, "A Time Before Slaughter," a serial poem which re-enacts the history of Auburn, WA, originally named Slaughter in honor of the late Lt. William A. Slaughter. I have finished a manuscript called "Kozer Variations," written after every poem in that Cuban poet's bilingual book, "Stet." I finished the poems in February, wrote an introduction in March and am now fine-tuning some of the poems that did not have the energy I’d hoped. I may rewrite those in a sort of take two reminiscent of jazz musicians, may do a slight bit of editing or leave them as is. I continue to workshop them at the weekly SPLAB Living Room. I write one American Sentence each day, a 17 syllable form Allen Ginsberg created based on haiku. At the end of this year I will have written one a day for a decade and would be ready for a book of them.

 I am putting the finishing touches on an essay and powerpoint demonstration, "Projective Verse: The Spiritual Legacy of the Beat Generation." It was commissioned by the Tools of the Sacred conference in Brussels and I will present it there in May. 

I am also gathering research materials for another bit of local history-in-verse, have a draft manuscript of collected (non-Slaughter) poems and I’m working on some other poetry-related projects now in the idea phase.

RM: What inspired you to write "A Time Before Slaughter"?

PN: I interviewed Peter Berg of the Planet Drum Foundation in 1994 and got a real sense that bioregionalism is the most needed political stance. I’ve been moving to practice that as much as possible since then. I feel the poet's main role in such a political stance is to learn the local history and tell it in verse. If poets do not tell the story, we're at the mercy of Fox News and other propagandists. In 1994 I met and interviewed Allen Ginsberg and got a deeper sense of the American Open Form tradition. In 1995 I interviewed Michael McClure and began my study of Projective Verse, and that included reading "Paterson" by William Carlos Williams and "The Maximus Poems" by Charles Olson, two epic poems which view U.S. American history through the events of their small towns, Paterson, N.J. and Gloucester, Mass. When one is writing organically, projectively, each poem is an exploration into deeper realms of consciousness; each poem is an experiment. Like Free Association, it can bypass the conscious mind and allow us a deeper look at our own issues and personal myth. I guess I intuited the Slaughter project as an interesting way to spend my time in Auburn, where I promised to live until my daughter graduated from Auburn High, which she did June 14, 2009. Seventeen years, six months and two days total.

RM: Our congratulations to your daughter on her graduation! Tell us about the process of writing an epic poem. What are some of the challenges?

PN: The main challenge is to start and to allow it to take its own course. Sam Hamill suggested I not be in a hurry to publish and Michael McClure seconded that and looked at early drafts of some poems he did not feel had the energy I was looking for. 

How to make verse out of history is difficult and requires a lot of time for research and incubation of individual poems. Sometimes you think you can get a poem out of a certain event, but the energy is not made available. Sometimes poems fall right into your lap. With me, some of the deeper issues/themes investigated in the book are personal projections, and the images and some themes are carrying over into other work, which then can be seen, in one way, as an extension of those themes. But the main stumbling block is starting, having time and making a commitment to doing it. I learned not to be in need of a quick payoff, and I am grateful.

RM: What is your writing process? How it has evolved throughout your lifetime?

PN: When I did those interviews with Ginsberg and McClure in 1994 and 1995, my writing was spontaneous, but I was not sure if I was writing projectively. I began an intense study of that work, which continued into graduate work on Organic Poetry. This is the term Robert Duncan and Denise Levertov used in the early '60s in their correspondence, and Denise has written a couple of seminal essays on the subject, including "Some Notes on Organic Form." I liked the term (in part) because it shares a root with organismic, which is a cosmology that resonates quite deeply with me. During the third semester of my graduate studies, my 12 years of work in radio, doing interviews on Whole-Systems philosophy and the organic approach to composing merged in a wonderful AHA! moment. As I cleared away some of my own issues, as I moved closer to individuation, this began to be reflected in my work, which is now, in some ways, becoming more dense, more true to the work of my mind. As Philip Whalen said about his work, it is a picture or graph of the mind moving. This makes it more important to guard the things you expose yourself to on one hand (avoid the trivial, closed and narrow) and, as Sam Hamill would say, feed your muse on the other. Although I think that I am always looking to get duende into the work and it has been said that duende scares the muse.

RM: Please tell us of your work with SPLAB in Auburn, and what is going on in its new location/incarnation in Seattle’s Columbia City neighborhood.

PN: SPLAB in Auburn was cofounded with me by Danika Dinsmore in 1997. In Auburn, as I illustrated in "A Time Before Slaughter," there is a need to control EVERYTHING, so even before we opened the place, the school district and Mayor were trying to control the language, our teaching methods, funds, everything. We had a relationship to the town where we were almost tolerated. HA! The idea of empowering youth is still a suspicious one in the former Slaughter. I have some stories! Of course me being of half-Cuban heritage and a Chicago native no doubt rubbed people the wrong way. My stubbornness did not help, but the result was an amazing learning experience and a kind of creative tension that helped propel the writing of the Slaughter book.

Still, the work we did there, looking back, was pretty remarkable. We facilitated visits by Anne Waldman, Andrew Schelling, Michael McClure, Ethelbert Miller, Wanda Coleman, Diane diPrima, Ed Sanders, Eileen Myles, Jerome Rothenberg, Victor Hernandez Cruz, Joanne Kyger and others. We had an annual Super Bowl of Poetry to counter-program the game. We had annual Ginsberg Marathons, the last of which went for 10.5 hours. We had a highly successful Teen Slam, which culminated in taking a group of young poets to San Francisco to compete in the National Teen Poetry Slam Championships. Angela Dy went on from that to be active in creating a Youth Speaks chapter in Seattle and do great work with young people. I am amazed, looking back, to see how much we accomplished, all the time providing a weekly public affairs radio program for as many as 18 stations, and raising a kid half the time.

In Columbia City, we've tried to learn from our experience in Auburn. I have a great deal more support and the community is much more open-minded. 98118 is the most diverse zip code in the United States, which says a lot. Still, the work of getting nonpoets to poetry events is difficult. Society has so marginalized itself with cheap entertainment and useless diversions, such as "American Idol," talk radio, video games and technology so that if someone is not a household name, there is an education process required to illustrate why a certain poet deserves wider attention. We could use a marketing budget of about $50K and that would do the trick, but in many ways the culture is at once getting more corporate (industry-generated is the term one media literacy activist uses) as well as being hungry for something authentic. 

And too many poets settle for something that will go over with a mainstream audience, rather than go for a deeper, more personal gesture. Much poetry (and art in general) lacks courage. It is no mistake that "Idol" contestants do covers of songs, not originals. It's entertainment and drama and the great TISH poet George Bowering asked years ago have we yet learned to choose joy over drama? We brought Michael McClure back to town and are planning visits by Nathaniel Mackey and Brenda Hillman in 2011. We have rekindled the Ginsberg Marathon and have a weekly writer's critique circle, Living Room, which runs every Tuesday at 7 p.m. through the end of May. We'll resume that in October.

RM: Thanks again, Paul, for speaking with us. One last question: What is the best thing about Seattle’s poetry scene, and what is the worst thing?
 
PN: It's difficult to make those blanket statements. A local jazz musician did a master's thesis on the cliquishness of the Seattle jazz scene, and that plays out in poetry as well, perhaps more so. Sam Hamill has put it best regarding this. He said:

"It's not the process, it's the LIFE of poetry. All this clamoring to be public is not only a nuisance, but a squandering of money and good will. These are not budding Buddhas. They are Oni—little poetry demons that trivialize the life of poetry, which is a path, not a destination. In the great not-knowing, there is only the learning, the path, the Way. The little Oni keep dancing and trying to become Big Devils, undermining principles and true practices."

I think Seattle, in large part, has a poetry community that can't make this distinction. Many people are trying to fill some kind of personal lack through becoming some kind of poetry star. Sam says most “poets” are interested in socializing and reinforcement. One can get the gist of the work of these folks and it boils down to look at me and it's not something that interests me. Lissa Wolsak, the great Vancouver poet says that there is little poetry she needs. There seems, in Seattle, a hostility to innovative writing, a theme we tried to explore at a panel I convened during the recent Bookfest in Columbia City.

That said, Seattle has some of the most attentive and appreciative audiences you'll find anywhere. Quiet sometimes to a fault! This is where the politeness comes in handy. And people here do read. Support and, really, a reverence for places like Elliott Bay Books and Open Books are tremendous signs of vitality. Still, I am hoping that Seattle can join neighbors like Vancouver B.C., Portland and San Francisco in having a real innovative movement in literature. This is the main need in this literary community.

Comment