Poet Paul Nelson described some of the first reactions to the news that he was about to write Auburn’s first epic poem.

“I can tell you story upon story where I tell someone, ‘I’m writing an epic poem about the history of Auburn, Washington,’ and the person will snicker. And then the book comes out, and they see some of these stories and hopefully they get a sense of what a remarkable place this is,” Nelson told an audience gathered recently to hear him read from his work, “A Time Before Slaughter” at the White River Valley Museum.

Looking a bit tired, having driven from Ashland, Ore. that day, Nelson, founder of the non-profit Global Voices Radio and co-founder of the Northwest SPokenword LAB (SPLAB!), gave a compelling reading, bravely wrapping lips and tongue around Wultshootseed, the language of the Muckleshoot Tribe. And in his gestures, in the varying expressions of his face, in the elastic voice that lent such cadence to his verse forms, the history of a place tumbled out.

Out came the community’s story before and after the arrival of the first white settlers, beginning with Native Americans, the death of Lt. William A. Slaughter — for whom the early town was named — the early settlers’ efforts to control the landscape, the treatment of Japanese Americans during WWII, even a tender poem to his daughter, Rebecca.

The title poem, “Slaughter is a Man,” in which Nelson writes about Slaughter as a man, a town, and an idea or a method of operation, sets up the notion of the book.

“Slaughter is a man, William Alloway Slaughter, a dependable man, an energetic officer, a crack shot with a rifle,” Nelson began in an even delivery, morphing into a thrice-repeated, rising sing-song chant in “Slaughter is the rush of Stuck through rocks on a rainy August Friday.”

Of course, like all places, Auburn is a mixture of light and shadow, so in addition to the good and beautiful things about the community, Nelson also read from poems that touched on the darker experience of Japanese-Americans, including their internment in relocation camps during the Second World War and the shameful burning of a prosperous Japanese farmer’s barn at the hands of his jealous neighbors.

One of the poems, “Song for Arthur Ballard,” Nelson said he likes to read to audiences not only because it honors the Native Americans but because it honors Ballard, a pioneer ethnographer of Northwest Native Americans and an exemplar of the idea that people, here the European Americans and the Native Americans, can get along.

“He’s such an example of that,” Nelson said of Ballard. “He’s probably one of the most beautiful and conscientious people who ever lived in this town, and there should be more to honor him.”

He quoted from reviewers who called his work a “part praise poem for Auburn.”

“I said yes, that’s what it is, and I’m glad that some folks understand that,” Nelson said.

Nelson explained in a recent interview with the Auburn Reporter why he choose poetry as his vehicle.

“Poetry is the language of the mythic, and mythology is the story that can’t be told. So how can you get around it? I think I have gotten to the story from about as many angles as are possible. I could have spent another 20 years and gotten up more, and you probably would have seen more in the book, about the shadow side of Native Americans. I could tell you stories from my 14 months working for the reservation that would just tear your heart out. So you can tell the story in a very straight way, and you can tell the story in a very mythic way, and I am much more interested in the mythic than in trying to make a point,” Nelson said.