Free Speech : poem sequences
by Eric Paul Shaffer
Publication Date: April 1, 2025 | LCCN: 2025932111
Paperback: $16.95 USD | ISBN 978-1-58775-056-4
E-Book: $9.99 USD | ISBN 978-1-58775-057-1
About the Book | From “End Construction” | About the Author | Praise
Free Speech was a winner in the 2025 New Mexico Book Association’s Southwest Book Design and Production Awards!
About the Book
Eric Paul Shaffer’s Free Speech includes two poem sequences addressing the endangered species of liberty in the American vernacular. First, Road Sign Suite presents poems of vehicular freedom inspired by familiar and surprising highway signs on an open road trip through the asphalt and interstate guts of the nation. Then, Restoring Lady Liberty explores constitutional freedom during the national renewal as the Statue of Liberty struggles to maintain the ideal while the torch passes from light to gold. The essay “Between a Road and a Gold Place: An Interface,” welds the two sequences together, statue to interstate. In these poems, America has never been clearer in traffic sign, iron structure, or clashing symbols.
From “End Construction”
Making monuments is a physical business,
and we have built enough
to challenge time —
still we expect dust.
Proclaim an end to this task,
a time for celebration
and admiration of effort.
Work is done: there is a new form.
About the Author
Eric Paul Shaffer is the author of eleven books of poetry. More than 600 of his poems have been published in the USA, Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, England, Germany, India, Iran, Ireland, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Scotland, Singapore, and Wales. A few of his poems have been translated into Esperanto, Farsi, or Spanish. He has also published a novel, two fiction chapbooks, and a volume of criticism.
Shaffer lives on O‘ahu and taught composition, literature, and creative writing at Honolulu Community College.
Praise
Free Speech catches lightning in a bottle.
— Ben Franklin
Free Speech? What about free hugs?
— Colossus of Rhodes
Free Speech is the thing with feathers…. Wait — I can do better!
— Emily Dickinson
Give me Free Speech or give me — no, never mind, just give me Free Speech!
— Nathan Hale
Free Speech will take your head off!
— Joseph-Ignace Guillotin
I paid a lot for Free Speech!
— Alexander Hamilton
It was many and many a year ago,
— Edgar Allan Poe
In a nation by the sea,
That an author there lived whom you may know
Speaking of Speech that is Free.
Free Speech loves You!
— Elmo
Campbell’s tomato soup can’t hold a can to Free Speech.
— Andy Warhol