A Million-Dollar Bill : Poems
by Eric Paul Shaffer
Publication Date: January 30, 2024 | LCCN: 2023944638
Paperback: $15.95 USD | ISBN 978-1-58775-044-1
E-Book: $9.99 USD | ISBN 978-1-58775-045-8
About the Book | A Poem | About the Author | Praise
About the Book
A Million-Dollar Bill surveys our lives in America up close and personal from the first young summer taste in “Watermelon Seeds” to the hopeful hand-made creation of legal tender to purchase the necessities and accessories of the American Dream in the title poem.
Quirky, original, and astute, this expansive and engaging poetry collection by Eric Paul Shaffer entertains even as each poem presses readers to pause and think for a moment.
From love to death to parking the car, from rain to ice to sky to falling stars, the little insights that grow large in language are here for the reading. Best of all, with A Million-Dollar Bill, you can keep the change.
A Poem
The Lessons of Moonlight
Since we must celebrate death, let us
leave it to the children.
We’ll cradle bowls of coins and candy,
awaiting a knock at the door,
While they learn the lesson of moonlights
from fallen leaves and caramel apples—
to enter a darkening world
dressed as monsters,
to read fate in sidewalk cracks
through holes in plastic masks,
to seek treats with pretty threats
at the doors of strangers.
About the Author
Eric Paul Shaffer is the author of eight 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 teaches composition, literature, and creative writing at Honolulu Community College.
Praise
A Million-Dollar Bill won the 2024 New Mexico Book Association’s Southwest Book Design and Production Award in Poetry!
Eric Paul Shaffer’s poems are always filled with clear light and fresh air. They restore deep attention and gratitude, a rebalancing between land and sky.
— Naomi Shihab Nye, Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, 2009-2015, and author of Fuel and Transfer
The poems in A Million-Dollar Bill represent Shaffer’s thoughtful presence in the world at his (and our) big-hearted best. His poems are full stories in small frames, always sharply said, never sentimental, relentlessly true, sensuously rich, always welcoming us in.
— J.D. Whitney, author of Grandmother Says, All My Relations, and Sweeping the Broom Shorter
A Million-Dollar Bill is Eric Paul Shaffer’s most imaginative book yet! With unparalleled accuracy and clarity, Shaffer’s astute observations turn the world on its ear through your ear. Read these poems aloud and often.
— Sara Backer, author of American Fuji and Bicycle Lotus
Eric Paul Shaffer’s poems must be radically après-garde because I swear I sometimes understand every word. It’s as if Shaffer’s appointed himself defender of those corniest of literary values: clarity and precision. He writes with a naive sense of wonder and play, as if earnest communication were still possible between human beings. You’d almost have to think the man enjoys being alive.
— M. Thomas Gammarino, author of King of the Worlds, Big in Japan, and Jellyfish Dreams
A Million-Dollar Bill reached me just in time. After going without any new Shaffer poems for eleven years, I was beginning to wonder if I was going to die of thirst, reading my way across the Great American Poetry Desert. I’m okay now. Thirst quenched but hoping I don’t have to wait that long again.
— Red Pine (Bill Porter), translator of The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain & author of Zen Baggage: A Pilgrimage to China