Basic Training: A Selection of Poems

by Paul J Schaefer

Overview

In the lineage of James Merrill and Philip Larkin, the poems in Basic Training are presented in traditional, accessible forms for a broad audience. Paul Schaefer plays with form-sonnets, villanelles, ballads, blank verse-contrasting everyday experience with formal poetic structure. The final pages of the book contain notes illuminating the references and inspiration for a limited number of the poems. Most of Schaefer's poems are self-explanatory, centered on quotidian life, revealing fundamental truths that come from a life of doing the basics.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781960090935
Publisher:	Monkfish Book Publishing Company
Publication date:	10/04/2024
Pages:	78
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.00(h) x 0.16(d)

About the Author

Paul J. Schaefer was born on dairy farm in Wisconsin at the peak of the Great Depression in November of 1933. After 12 years of parochial school he attended Marquette University where he obtained a bachelors degree with majors in History and English. He was drafted into the US Army and spent two years at Fort Riley Kansas. After discharge he moved to New York where he worked for Western Publishing Company, first in Poughkeepsie NY and then in New York City. He married Gale Quinn Schaefer, fathered two children, Sarah and Emily, and has three grandchildren, Abbie, Sophie and Franny. Having retired, Paul volunteered for twenty years in the Bard Prison Initiative, helping to bring college education to incarcerated persons. He lives in Rhinebeck, New York in the Hudson Valley.