Even Further West

Years ago assigned by a keen reviewer to the “Clear Pool School” of poetry, Shaffer’s work again presents sharply detailed and unexpected scenes of how the blue world looks as a bouncing inflatable globe on a day at the beach, beneath a single streetlight on a dark upcountry road, after the surprise of “NO TRESPASSING” signs between slippahs and the sand, beyond our perverse thirst for apocalypse even in paradise. Yet a love for the land, people, friends, and significant others on the islands shines within these pages as well, in dry grass or rain, under plumeria and kiawe, and leads to lives that grow and flourish in the same landscape.