The DaySong exercise is only possible writing projectively and is a test of a poet’s ability to write in the method Charles Olson, in part described as a “use of speech at its least careless and least logical.” It also incorporates a notion that the late BC poet Barry McKinnon ascribed to William Carlos Williams, that each poem you write should be a summary of your life to that point. Having three long-time friends die at age 62 in 2022/2023 and writing the DaySong two weeks before Nelson was to turn 62 was part of the energy that propelled this poem.
Poet/interviewer Paul E. Nelson founded the Cascadia Poetics LAB & the Cascadia Poetry Festival. Books include Haibun de la Serna (2022), A Time Before Slaughter/Pig War: & Other Songs of Cascadia (2020) American Prophets (interviews 1994-2012) (2018) & American Sentences (2015, 2021). Co-Editor of Cascadian Zen Volume I: Bioregional Writings on Cascadia Here and Now (2023, Watershed Press), Make it True meets Medusario (2019) (Spanish & English) and other anthologies. He’s Literary Executor for the late poet Sam Hamill and lives in Rainier Beach, alongside dəxʷwuqʷed Creek.