Philip Whalen’s ‘Overtime’
Philip Whalen, Overtime: Selected PoemsEdited by Michael Rothenberg, introduction by Leslie ScalapinoNew York: Penguin Books, 1999Overtime brings back into print, in a new format, and with new work...
View ArticleDo You Want To Make Something Out of It?: Zen meditation and the artistic...
Allen Ginsberg begins his essay "Meditation and Poetics" with this paragraph: It's an old tradition in the West among great poets that poetry is rarely thought of as 'just poetry.' Real poetry...
View ArticleBewilderment
To the Sufis, words precede existence, perhaps because a cry brings people running. — Fannie Howe Whenever anyone asks me how I came to be a Zen priest and abbot I always say “accidentally.” This is...
View ArticleSaved From Freezing: Spiritual Practice, Art Practice
Almost every day I listen to or read or watch the news, some days all three of these, because I want to stay tuned to what is seemingly going on in the world outside my house. These days this is an...
View ArticleAre You Writing?
Though they say writing is a bad habit for a Zen priest, I can’t help it. I seem to be writing all the time. I write poems of several varieties in several voices, journal entries, dharma talks,...
View ArticleEssays in The Sun Magazine
These essays are available in print but not online.“The Two Worlds”The Sun (Issue 376, April 2007)“Wash Your Bowls”The Sun (Issue 354, June 2005)“The Religion of Politics, The Politics of Religion”The...
View ArticleThe Collected Poems of Philip Whalen
The Collected Poems of Philip WhalenEdited by Michael RothenbergForeword by Gary SnyderIntroduction by Leslie ScalapinoWesleyan University Press, Middletown, CTDec 28, 2007As a cultural phenomenon,...
View ArticleLight(silence)word
1.Light is mysterious. Both a wave and a particle, and therefore neither, light is a universal constant; neither medium nor content, light is strangely all-pervasive. Seeing anything is not so much...
View ArticlePlum Blossoms Open Early Spring
Preview only. Full access requires a Tricycle membership.Norman reviews Kazuaki Tanahashi's new translation of Dogen’s Shobo Genzo, Treasury of the True Dharma Eye: Zen Master Dogen’s Shobo Genzo...
View ArticleNorman Fischer on Attack of the Difficult Poems
Norman reviews Attack of the Difficult Poems: Essays and Inventions by Charles Bernstein (University of Chicago Press, January 1, 2011):“attack of the difficult poems” … is a great book! you must read...
View ArticleEssays in Tricycle
Previews only. Full access to these essays requires a Tricycle membership.“Beyond Language”Finding freedom through thoughts and wordsTricycle (Summer 2011)Please see version edited for Experience:...
View ArticleBeyond Language?
A seemingly inescapable fact of my life is that I write poems and I keep on writing poems. Why would I feel the need to do this? I don’t think of poetry as self expression or making something beautiful...
View ArticleA note on the visual poetry of Whalen, Grenier, and Lazer
Norman reflects on the visual poetry of Philip Whalen, Robert Grenier, and Hank Lazer:From the beginning of my writing, I have been concerned with (floored by) the fact of a word, or a letter, as a...
View ArticlePoetry as path, as weapon: On Uche Nduka
Norman reviews Ijele by Uche Nduka (Overpass Books 2012):How many poetries are there; how many could there be? The poetry of investigation, the poetry of protest, personal poetry, national poetry,...
View ArticleNotes on 'A Mammal of Style'
Norman reviews A Mammal of Style by Ted Greenwald and Kit Robinson (Roof Books 2013):Let’s begin with the title A Mammal of Style, which of course echoes the Chicago Manual of Style, someone’s notion...
View Article'Gradually the World'
Norman review's Burt Kimmelman’s Gradually the World: New and Selected Poems, 1982–2013 (BlazeVOX [books] 2013):I was unfamiliar with the poetry of Burt Kimmelman when Jacket2 asked me to take up the...
View ArticleEssays in Buddhadharma and Shambhala Sun at Lions Roar
“Suffering Opens The Real Path”Lions Roar (May 2015), excerpted from Solid Ground (2011)“No Teacher of Zen”Buddhadharma (Spring 2014)“Nothing to Give, No One to Receive It”Shambhala Sun (Jan...
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