Category: Zen Poetics

On June 1, 2013, I was honored to be named the Featured Poet for the 12th Annual Allen Ginsberg Memorial Open Mic Poetry Marathon in Seattle. For the past twelve years poet and archivist Paul Nelson has engineered this event. Paul has the pulse of poetry in the universe. He’s been a guest poet in China, he’s interviewed Ginsberg, McClure, and dozens of other poets, and he has written about the Projective Verse poets of the Black Mountain school—Charles Olson, Creeley, and Duncan among others. His two books: Before Slaughter, poems, and Organic Poetry—American Field Poetics are landmark works. Paul’s goal is to keep it coming—poetry is the heart beat, the blood, the juice of the modern idiom. The marathon is just one aspect of his dedication to poetry. By marathon Paul means a marathon. He kicked it off at 8:00 PM June 1st by giving me 45 minutes to read from my collection Satori, poems. At 6:00 AM the next morning, there was a recitation of Ginsberg’s Wichita Sunrise Sutra followed by a communal breakfast of scrambled eggs and pancakes and man, we were back in the days of the Summer of Love—the only thing missing was the acid dream. Paul ended the marathon at 1:00 PM June 2nd . This is a glorious tribute to the enduring power of Allen Ginsberg to inspire writers, to keep alive...