Living at the Monastery, Working in the Kitchen is a series of 'textless translations' of the poet Shih-te (Pickup), who was a friend of Han-shan (Cold Mountain). Most of Shih-te's poems were lost, and Eric Paul Shaffer has imaginged more into existence than there currently are by Shih-te himself.
Eric Paul Shaffer lives in Kula, on Maui, with Veronica and Harlequin on the sunset slope of Haleakalā. He is author of four books and a chapbook of poetry, two chapbooks of fiction, and non-fiction articles and reviews. His work appears in Ploughshares, North American Review, ACM, American Scholar, Threepenny Review, Rattle, Beloit Poetry Journal, Bakunin, Malahat Review, Poetry Ireland Review, and the anthology 100 Poets Against the War. Shaffer received the 2000 Potent Prose Ax Prize for Poetry, the 2002 Elliot Cades Award for Literature (presented annually to an established writer in Hawaiʻi), a fellowship to the Summer 2006 Fishtrap Writers Retreat and Workshop, and the 2006 Rupert Hughes Writing Award (3rd place).
Reviews
“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, author of The Zen Works of Stonehouse, The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain, The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma, Road to Heaven, and The Clouds Should Know Me By Now
“I've enjoyed [Shaffer's] work for years and [his] book is absolutely beautiful and impressive in its range of styles, forms, subjects, and sensibilities.”
— Gerald Locklin, author of Charles Bukowski: A Sure Bet
“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 (2000), 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
“A haunting collection of poems imagined in the voice of Shih-te, an eighth-century Kuo-Ch'ing Monastery cook and janitor (and poet) living in China during the T'ang Dynasty.
Looking for the key to enlightenment? Shih-te, as resurrected skillfully by Shaffer, whispers the secret: look to the commonplace.
A lovely muse.”
— The Boox Review
“The poetic spirit connects across the centuries. Shaffer?s outside/in, inside/out view is the next best thing to being there.”
— Steve Sanfield, author of Wandering, A New Way, He Smiled to Himself, and A Fall from Grace
“Once again, Eric Paul Shaffer offers up to us the 'work of the moment.' In this new book of poems, he takes on monastic life in ancient China. But don't be confused or misled, these contemporary poems have enough irreverence for all of us.
— James Taylor III, author of Fresh Leather and Forty Years & 20 Paces
“These poems — like a strand of black hair in a monastery rice bowl — demand our attention and irreverently remind us that ?enlightenment? has nothing to do with purity or perfection. 'Be human!' Shaffer bellows.”
“These 'textless translations' are Shaffer's own poetic evocation of the life of Shih-te — the T'ang Dynasty rogue poet, friend of Han-shan, and T'ien-t'ai monastery cook. Based on Shih-te's spirit and style, Shaffer offers a suitably irreverent sequence of poems that are at once playful and provocative. Both Han-shan and Shih-te are well known for their mockery of the monks, indeed of anyone displaying signs of artifice and pretension. These poems capture the cheeky challenges of those freed from the limitations of a formal structure yet still engaged with it. 'The solitary life of Cold Peak (Han-shan) proves /one may live long on the Edge of Heaven, /falling neither in /nor out.'
“And self-mockery is never far away: 'I lie on steps before the kitchen door, / fart and scratch myself / like any Buddha.'”
Eric Paul Shaffer lives in Kula, on Maui, with Veronica and Harlequin on the sunset slope of Haleakalā. He is author of four books and a chapbook of poetry, two chapbooks of fiction, and non-fiction articles and reviews. His work appears in Ploughshares, North American Review, ACM, American Scholar, Threepenny Review, Rattle, Beloit Poetry Journal, Bakunin, Malahat Review, Poetry Ireland Review, and the anthology 100 Poets Against the War. Shaffer received the 2000 Potent Prose Ax Prize for Poetry, the 2002 Elliot Cades Award for Literature (presented annually to an established writer in Hawaiʻi), a fellowship to the Summer 2006 Fishtrap Writers Retreat and Workshop, and the 2006 Rupert Hughes Writing Award (3rd place).
