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Living at the Monastery, Working in the Kitchen
Poetry. "How wonderful to discover these lost works in the last leavings of the Twentieth Century. May their author continue to sweep the kitchens, the courtyards, the shrine halls of his always surprising mind. May we continue to share such delightful detritus. And may it continue to amount to nothing much at all. Thanks for the broom"--Bill Porter. "In LIVING IN THE MONASTERY, WORKING IN THE KITCHEN, Eric Paul Shaffer employs this discerning curmudgeon's voice with ironic understanding for those who may wish to pursue enlightenment but who must also work to live.... Companion volume to Shaffer's PORTABLE PLANET, this new book reveals Shih-te giving Eastern teachings an irreverent twist even as he disarms us with his struggle to attain a sense of purpose, place, and identity"--Cheri Crenshaw, Small Press Review.
- GenresPoetry
80 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2001
5 people want to read
About the author
Eric Paul Shaffer
17 books43 followersEric Paul Shaffer is author of ten volumes of poetry. In the current twenties are Second Nature, Free Speech, and Green Leaves: Selected & New Poems. In the teens were Even Further West (Unsolicited Press, 2018) and A Million-Dollar Bill (Grayson Books, 2016; Coyote Arts, 2024). In the oughts, Lāhaina Noon: Nā Mele O Maui; Living at the Monastery, Working in the Kitchen; and Portable Planet. As long ago as the previous millennium were RattleSnake Rider and Kindling: Poems from Two Poets (with James Taylor III).
Second Nature, due momentarily, is a single poetry volume of sixty poems previously published individually in reviews of the past decades.
Nearly seven hundred individual poems appear in venues throughout the world, including Slate, North American Review, The Sun Magazine, RATTLE, Ploughshares, and Threepenny Review; Ireland's Poetry Ireland Review and Southword Journal; Australia’s Cordite Poetry Review, Going Down Swinging, Island, and Quadrant Magazine,; Canada’s Antigonish Review, Dalhousie Review, Event, The Fiddlehead, Prairie Fire, and PRISM International; New Zealand’s Takahé and Poetry NZ; England’s The Stand Magazine, and Magma; and in the anthologies 100 Poets Against the War (Salt 2003); The EcoPoetry Anthology (Trinity UP 2013); and Jack London Is Dead: Contemporary Euro-American Poetry of Hawai‘i (And Some Stories) (Tinfish 2013).
His first novel Burn & Learn, or Memoirs of the Cenozoic Era was published by Leaping Dog Press in 2009, and two chapbooks of fiction selected from the novel have also been published: The Felony Stick and You Are Here.
Shaffer has completed and will soon circulate for publication a second novel Six Ways Home, the story of fifteen-year-old Ray who works at a Michigan Christmas tree farm and lives with his mother, brother, and sister, who have been recently abandoned by the father.
In 2002, Shaffer won the Elliot Cades Award for Literature, an endowed literary prize awarded annually to an established local writer in Hawai‘i. In 2006, he received a fellowship to the Fishtrap Summer Writers Workshop and Retreat; won the Rupert Hughes Writing Award for an excerpt of his novel-in-progress Six Ways Home; and received the "Award of Excellence" in the Ka Palapala Po‘okela Book Awards for Lāhaina Noon from the Hawai‘i Book Publishers Association. In 2019, Even Further West also received "Honorable Mention" in the Ka Palapala Po‘okela Book Awards.
Shaffer’s poem "Officer, I Saw the Whole Thing," from Lāhaina Noon, received a "Special Mention" in the 2007 Pushcart Prize Anthology XXXI. In 2009, for his poem "The Whistle," he won the 2009 James M. Vaughan Award for Poetry from Hawai‘i Pacific University; the poem is included in A Million-Dollar Bill. In 2010, his poem "A Boat of Bones" received first place in the Lorin Tar Gill Writing Competition sponsored by the National League of American PEN Women; this poem is included in Even Further West and in Green Leaves: Selected & New Poems.
Long ago, he was a co-editor of Conceptions Southwest and a book reviewer and poetry co-editor for Stick: Contemporary Poetry and Timeless Cuisine. More recently, he has reviewed for Fish Drum, Mad Blood, Maui Time Weekly, Chiron Review, and The Pedestal Magazine. He was also a contributing editor for The 365 Project.
Shaffer was raised, educated, and annealed in Maryland, Michigan, Indiana, New Mexico, California, and all parts Pacific, including Okinawa, Maui, and Oʻahu.
Second Nature, due momentarily, is a single poetry volume of sixty poems previously published individually in reviews of the past decades.
Nearly seven hundred individual poems appear in venues throughout the world, including Slate, North American Review, The Sun Magazine, RATTLE, Ploughshares, and Threepenny Review; Ireland's Poetry Ireland Review and Southword Journal; Australia’s Cordite Poetry Review, Going Down Swinging, Island, and Quadrant Magazine,; Canada’s Antigonish Review, Dalhousie Review, Event, The Fiddlehead, Prairie Fire, and PRISM International; New Zealand’s Takahé and Poetry NZ; England’s The Stand Magazine, and Magma; and in the anthologies 100 Poets Against the War (Salt 2003); The EcoPoetry Anthology (Trinity UP 2013); and Jack London Is Dead: Contemporary Euro-American Poetry of Hawai‘i (And Some Stories) (Tinfish 2013).
His first novel Burn & Learn, or Memoirs of the Cenozoic Era was published by Leaping Dog Press in 2009, and two chapbooks of fiction selected from the novel have also been published: The Felony Stick and You Are Here.
Shaffer has completed and will soon circulate for publication a second novel Six Ways Home, the story of fifteen-year-old Ray who works at a Michigan Christmas tree farm and lives with his mother, brother, and sister, who have been recently abandoned by the father.
In 2002, Shaffer won the Elliot Cades Award for Literature, an endowed literary prize awarded annually to an established local writer in Hawai‘i. In 2006, he received a fellowship to the Fishtrap Summer Writers Workshop and Retreat; won the Rupert Hughes Writing Award for an excerpt of his novel-in-progress Six Ways Home; and received the "Award of Excellence" in the Ka Palapala Po‘okela Book Awards for Lāhaina Noon from the Hawai‘i Book Publishers Association. In 2019, Even Further West also received "Honorable Mention" in the Ka Palapala Po‘okela Book Awards.
Shaffer’s poem "Officer, I Saw the Whole Thing," from Lāhaina Noon, received a "Special Mention" in the 2007 Pushcart Prize Anthology XXXI. In 2009, for his poem "The Whistle," he won the 2009 James M. Vaughan Award for Poetry from Hawai‘i Pacific University; the poem is included in A Million-Dollar Bill. In 2010, his poem "A Boat of Bones" received first place in the Lorin Tar Gill Writing Competition sponsored by the National League of American PEN Women; this poem is included in Even Further West and in Green Leaves: Selected & New Poems.
Long ago, he was a co-editor of Conceptions Southwest and a book reviewer and poetry co-editor for Stick: Contemporary Poetry and Timeless Cuisine. More recently, he has reviewed for Fish Drum, Mad Blood, Maui Time Weekly, Chiron Review, and The Pedestal Magazine. He was also a contributing editor for The 365 Project.
Shaffer was raised, educated, and annealed in Maryland, Michigan, Indiana, New Mexico, California, and all parts Pacific, including Okinawa, Maui, and Oʻahu.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
October 18, 2008
I love reading the ancient asian poets & Eric Paul Shaffer's Living at the Monastery could have actually have been written long ago. I like his poetry & really loved the poor old cook . An interesting poetry book since I'm a huge fan of Basho & his contemporaries.
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