Pg. 69: Eric Paul Shaffer's "Lāhaina Noon"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Eric Paul Shaffer's Lāhaina Noon.

About the book, from the publisher:

Lāhaina Noon is the moment when tropical sun shines straight down. No shadows darken that astonishing moment of illumination, and Hawai´i is where it happens. Lāhaina Noon, Eric Paul Shaffer’s fifth book, contains poems of Maui that reveal a clarity and sense of place as deep as lines of Billy Collins, profound as Gary Snyder, and direct as Jim Harrison.

Among the praise for Lāhaina Noon:

“The arrival of a new collection of Shaffer’s precise, graceful, witty, luminous work makes for a happy day in the Fowler household. No one is better at peeling away a single, ordinary moment until the whole world has been revealed.”
— Karen Joy Fowler, author of The Jane Austen Book Club, Sarah Canary, and Sister Noon

“Lāhaina Noon is not only a specific study of Maui, but a brilliant examination of a human’s place in the cosmos. Eric Paul Shaffer’s clear, sane, poems will help you understand where you are wherever you are.”
— Sara Backer, author of American Fuji

“Eric Paul Shaffer’s poems, well-crafted and wise, don’t speak from the mind, the heart, the spirit — those are our divisions; they speak from the whole, integrated mammal he is — the sort of voice we need more of on this great Earth.”
— J. D. Whitney, author of Grandmother Says and Word of Mouth

“Eric Paul Shaffer, shadowless man of Lahaina Noon — He’s in camo — You think you see him but he isn’t there — He is like earth shine on dark side of the moon — He is writing down his life as it happens — Mockingbird listening to Mozart — Tracking Big Ursa through night sky — He tells us what he saw when sky crack open like blue Easter egg — Epiphanies that comprise our daily life.”
— Albert Saijo, author of Outspeaks: A Rhapsody and Trip Trap (with Jack Kerouac and Lew Welch)

“Like a magic lantern, Shaffer is a bearer of light. At times his poetry becomes so incandescent it makes you just sit in wonder. The rest of the time it reveals lush landscape and uncommon wisdom. Pay attention. This is the dawning of a major talent.”
— Steven Taylor Goldsberry, author of Luzon and The Writer's Book of Wisdom

Visit the publisher's website to learn more about Lāhaina Noon.

The Page 69 Test: Lāhaina Noon.

--Marshal Zeringue