Customer Reviews

Living at the Monastery, Working in the Kitchen: Poems (Leaping Dog Press Book)

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These lyrics, from a 9th century zen monk who knows his way around work and play, arrogance and humility, keep bringing us back: to work, to our places in the pecking order, to friends and how they do and do not understand us, to seeing our suffering for what it is and what it is not. Shih te announces, "The kitchen I work in is dark, / but clean as a kernal of uncooked rice . . . My broom stands by the stove, / palm-polished wood in easy reach / should I wish to sweep red dust around the room." And in a time when the retreat centers and spiritual workshops are full, Shih te takes a sly look at his buddy Han Shan: "Most days I refuse / Cold Peak's invitation to the clouds. / In the kitchen, fire cooks rice / but only with the willing work of water. / I am happy as I am, / and that's enough."
Like his PORTABLE PLANET, these poems come with a set of instructions: "Do your work. Stop. Listen. Eat. Wash your bowls. Sit still. Breathe." I hesitated to read anymore; what else could there be? But there's more!

(...)I was never much of a poetry fan. Until I met Shaffer's poetry that is.

I met him at (a bookstore) on Maui and was invited to his poetry reading. With two young children I rarely made it out of the house in the evening, but something compelled me to go. Listening to him read his work was excellent! I've bought all he's written ever since.

If you want to read poetry that is light yet insightful, keen and at times biting, buy Eric Paul Shaffer's "Living at the Monestery, Working in the Kitchen." You'll read it over and over again.

I have never been much of a poetry reader--mostly because I have often found it to be obtuse or irrelevant. My opinion changed, though, after reading Eric Shaffer's work. I loved PORTABLE PLANET (his first collection of poems), and LIVING IN THE MONASTERY, WORKING IN THE KITCHEN was even better! His poetry is fresh, humorous and filled with simple images that manage to evoke complex emotions. "Will good and evil deeds be weighed?/Who ponders such nonsense is lost." -- simple truth, eloquently stated. Buy this book and forget your preconceived notions about poetry. Eric Shaffer will blow them out of the water!

I spent 13 months at a Zen monastery and reading Shaffer's book was like a jump into a cool pond after a long summer day baling hay. These poems cleanse the stuffy spiritual dirt from your bones and release the playfulness that is inherently ours for the taking. "The glory of this great round moon/ would make the Buddha gasp./ Stars shy from silver light/ framed by soft black boughs/ in a sky so deep in blue/ a lone cloud sails dark crests on an empty sea./ What a shame to say all this/ just because I can't/ keep my mouth shut."

Shaffer knows how to have fun.

Eric Paul Shaffer, a scholar of Lew Welch, Gertrude Stein and William Shakespeare, turns his reckless eye to the far east and examines the life and personality of Shih-te, friend of that bear of a poet, Han-shan, and an accomplished poet himself. Many of Shaffer's re-creations of Shih-te's work are poignantly funny as he takes out his wrath, his rapier wit, on the monks of the monastery where he works as a cook. These monks, you see, take themselves far too seriously for Shih-te's taste. Not Han-shan, not even Shih-te himself, escape Shih-te's ire for very long, as the poet-cook considers his entire world fair game. Shaffer is a poet of uncommon elegance and subtlety, and enough of a roughneck to keep his work deeply-rooted and gritty. Shaffer's best since "Rattlesnake Rider" (sadly out of print), and even better the second time through!