Overview

Green Leaves: New and Selected Poems collects work from Eric Paul Shaffer's seven volumes and thirty-five years of publication. On voyages around the Pacific Rim, from California to Okinawa to Hawai'i, Shaffer's sharp eye for natural and human detail delights and illuminates. A charter member of the ""Clear Pool School,"" Shaffer writes direct, profound, and often funny poems celebrating the American vernacular and encouraging a broader sense of the human, humane, ecological, and planetary.

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9781587750427

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Reviews

"""Green Leaves is fine. Think I'll make a pot of tea with these poems.""- Red Pine, a.k.a. Bill Porter, translator of Dancing With the Dead: The Essential Red Pine Translations, The Zen Works of Stone House & In Such Hard Times & author of Zen Baggage: A Pilgrimage to China ""Eric Paul Shaffer writes generous poems from a full, good heart and bright spirit - full of all the gratitude and wonder he feels at finding himself a mammal on this great Earth. Sadness and pain are here too, but they shrink in the light of these fine poems, which offer that rare balance of substance and accessibility.""- J.D. Whitney, author of Grandmother Says & Sweeping the Broom Shorter ""The piercing clarity of these poems acts as a 'window to this world' bringing its ordinary wonders into sharp view. Whether on a road to a city dump or a mountain pass to a monastery, Shaffer shows us that the quest is the same, to 'Live now' because this life is what we have. In line after remarkable line, the act of seeing and writing are woven into a powerful ethic of care for the earth because, as these poems remind us, 'We won't know what's lost until we can name what we see.'"" - Derek N. Otsuji, author of The Kitchen of Small Hours ""I have admired the work of Eric Paul Shaffer for many years, but to see it gathered in Green Leaves is stunning. These are pieces of wonder and wonderful pieces, the products of an open sensitive mind, of someone in love with words and the world and the love affair between words and the world. Green Leaves is a monument to what can be accomplished when a person dedicates their life to poetry and to paying attention. As I read it, I realized that I was muttering to myself again and again, ""beautiful, beautiful, beautiful ..."" - Joseph Mills, Susan Burress Wall Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, and author of This Miraculous Turning; Exit, pursued by a bear; & Bleachers ""Can a New & Selected volume with depth and detail, image and imagination, breadth and breath also be fun to read? YES! Eric Paul Shaffer is the environmentalist of tomorrow, scrutinizing everything under the microscope and through the telescope. Read his poems today and be prepared for the future."" - Sara Backer, author of Such Luck, Bicycle Lotus, Scavenger Hunt & American Fuji ""Eric Paul Shaffer's deeply felt generosity towards his fellow humans is on display in Green Leaves: Selected & New Poems. The collection, spanning from 1988 to the present, reveals the patterns of Shaffer's engagement: encounters with the greatness of the universe balanced by everyday acts rendered poignant in Shaffer's careful hand; a celebration of life while looking unflinchingly at mortality; and, like many of the greats of American poetry, an approach that relies on humor and joy over sentimentality."" - Shawna Yang Ryan, author of Water Ghosts & Green Island ""How fortunate we are to have a collection of Eric Paul Shaffer's work that spans the full arc of his writing career. In this collection, we find a poet whose precision with language serves a restless and, yes, sometimes reckless heart. Shaffer dares to let big questions drive his work and to offer bold answers. He is a poet who is comfortable making readers a little uncomfortable while consistently offering clear insight and dynamic, lyrical phrasing. I find myself welcomed into the worlds of the poems and encouraged to see how Shaffer's striving for truth is always an effort to see the real world, the living planet, for what it is and to help us live a little better while we are here."" - Matt Daly, author of Between Here and Home"

""Green Leaves is fine. Think I'll make a pot of tea with these poems.""- Red Pine, a.k.a. Bill Porter, translator of Dancing With the Dead: The Essential Red Pine Translations, The Zen Works of Stone House & In Such Hard Times & author of Zen Baggage: A Pilgrimage to China ""Eric Paul Shaffer writes generous poems from a full, good heart and bright spirit - full of all the gratitude and wonder he feels at finding himself a mammal on this great Earth. Sadness and pain are here too, but they shrink in the light of these fine poems, which offer that rare balance of substance and accessibility.""- J.D. Whitney, author of Grandmother Says & Sweeping the Broom Shorter ""The piercing clarity of these poems acts as a 'window to this world' bringing its ordinary wonders into sharp view. Whether on a road to a city dump or a mountain pass to a monastery, Shaffer shows us that the quest is the same, to 'Live now' because this life is what we have. In line after remarkable line, the act of seeing and writing are woven into a powerful ethic of care for the earth because, as these poems remind us, 'We won't know what's lost until we can name what we see.'"" - Derek N. Otsuji, author of The Kitchen of Small Hours ""I have admired the work of Eric Paul Shaffer for many years, but to see it gathered in Green Leaves is stunning. These are pieces of wonder and wonderful pieces, the products of an open sensitive mind, of someone in love with words and the world and the love affair between words and the world. Green Leaves is a monument to what can be accomplished when a person dedicates their life to poetry and to paying attention. As I read it, I realized that I was muttering to myself again and again, ""beautiful, beautiful, beautiful ..."" - Joseph Mills, Susan Burress Wall Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, and author of This Miraculous Turning; Exit, pursued by a bear; & Bleachers ""Can a New & Selected volume with depth and detail, image and imagination, breadth and breath also be fun to read? YES! Eric Paul Shaffer is the environmentalist of tomorrow, scrutinizing everything under the microscope and through the telescope. Read his poems today and be prepared for the future."" - Sara Backer, author of Such Luck, Bicycle Lotus, Scavenger Hunt & American Fuji ""Eric Paul Shaffer's deeply felt generosity towards his fellow humans is on display in Green Leaves: Selected & New Poems. The collection, spanning from 1988 to the present, reveals the patterns of Shaffer's engagement: encounters with the greatness of the universe balanced by everyday acts rendered poignant in Shaffer's careful hand; a celebration of life while looking unflinchingly at mortality; and, like many of the greats of American poetry, an approach that relies on humor and joy over sentimentality."" - Shawna Yang Ryan, author of Water Ghosts & Green Island ""How fortunate we are to have a collection of Eric Paul Shaffer's work that spans the full arc of his writing career. In this collection, we find a poet whose precision with language serves a restless and, yes, sometimes reckless heart. Shaffer dares to let big questions drive his work and to offer bold answers. He is a poet who is comfortable making readers a little uncomfortable while consistently offering clear insight and dynamic, lyrical phrasing. I find myself welcomed into the worlds of the poems and encouraged to see how Shaffer's striving for truth is always an effort to see the real world, the living planet, for what it is and to help us live a little better while we are here."" - Matt Daly, author of Between Here and Home

Author Information

Eric Paul Shaffer is the author of seven books of poetry. More than 600 of his poems have been published in the USA, Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, England, Germany, India, Iran, Ireland, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Scotland, Singapore, and Wales. A few of his poems have been translated into Esperanto, Farsi, or Spanish. He has also published a novel, two fiction chapbooks, and a volume of criticism. Shaffer lives on O'ahu and teaches composition, literature, and creative writing at Honolulu Community College.

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