Living at the Monastery, Working in the Kitchen: Poems

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.

Eric Paul Shaffer is author of five books of poetry, most recently LAHAINA NOON: NA MELE O MAUI: POEMS, which received an "Award of Excellence" in the Hawai'i Book Publishers Association's 2006 Ka Palapala Po'okela Book Awards. More than 250 of his poems have been published in local, national, and international magazines, and in the anthologies 100 Poets Against the War and The Soul Unearthed. His short fiction appeared in Bamboo Ridge, Bakunin, Prose Ax, and Natural Bridge, and in two chapbooks of fiction selected from BURN & LEARN: You Are Here (Obscure Publications) and The Felony Stick (Leaping Dog Press). Shaffer received the 2002 Elliot Cades Award for Literature, and he was a 2006 Fellow at the annual Summer Fishtrap Writers Workshop and Retreat at Wallowa Lake near Enterprise, Oregon. He lives with his wife Veronica and two rambunctious sister cats on a ridge overlooking Kalihi. He teaches composition and literature at Honolulu Community College.