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    A Million-Dollar Bill
    A Million-Dollar Bill
    A Million-Dollar Bill
    Ebook103 pages48 minutes

    A Million-Dollar Bill

    By Eric Paul Shaffer

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    About this ebook

    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.

     

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCoyote Arts
    Release dateJan 30, 2024
    ISBN9781587750458
    A Million-Dollar Bill

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      Book preview

      A Million-Dollar Bill - Eric Paul Shaffer

      Cover of A Million-Dollar Bill: Poems by Eric Paul Shaffer

      Praise for A Million-Dollar Bill

      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 and author of Zen Baggage: A Pilgrimage to China

      A Million-Dollar Bill

      Other Books by Eric Paul Shaffer

      Poetry

      Kindling: Poems from Two Poets   (Longhand Press; with James Taylor III)

      RattleSnake Rider   (Longhand Press)

      Portable Planet   (Leaping Dog Press)

      Living at the Monastery, Working in the Kitchen   (Leaping Dog Press)

      Lāhaina Noon: Nā Mele O Maui   (Leaping Dog Press)

      Road Sign Suite: Across America and Again   (Obscure Publications)

      Restoring Lady Liberty   (Obscure Publications)

      Even Further West   (Unsolicited Press)

      Green Leaves: Selected & New Poems   (Coyote Arts)

      Fiction

      You Are Here   (Obscure Publications)

      The Felony Stick   (Leaping Dog Press)

      Burn & Learn, or Memoirs of the Cenozoic Era   (Leaping Dog Press)

      Criticism

      How I Read Gertrude Stein by Lew Welch   (Grey Fox Press)

      Title Page: A Million-Dollar Bill: Poems by Eric Paul Shaffer, Coyote Arts, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 2024

      A Million-Dollar Bill.

      Copyright © 2016, 2024 Eric Paul Shaffer

      Originally published by Grayson Books, West Hartford, Connecticut, 2016.

      Second edition published by Coyote Arts, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 2024.

      Interior & Cover Design by Cindy Stewart

      Author Photo by Melanie Van der Tuin

      Second Edition

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.

      ISBN

      978-1-58775-044-1 (paper)

      978-1-58775-045-8 (e-book)

      Library of Congress Control Number:  2023944638

      Coyote Arts LLC

      PO Box 6690

      Albuquerque, New Mexico 87197-6690 USA

      coyote-arts.com

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      Contents

      Watermelon Seeds

      Watermelon Seeds

      13

      A Telephone

      14

      The Printer

      15

      An Alchemy of Soap and Seeds and Cinders

      16

      The Woman I Might Have Been

      18

      Exploring the House Next Door When Nobody’s Home

      20

      Cleaning Up After the Storm

      21

      A Festival of Crescents

      22

      Fortuitous

      23

      The Famous Poet’s Wife

      25

      How I Lost My Library Card

      26

      The Evil Eric

      27

      For the Anniversary of My Death

      29

      For All You Touch

      30

      River Eye

      31

      A Silver Flask

      Illumination

      35

      Among the Roots

      36

      McNeil, Arkansas, 1942

      37

      City of the Anti-Ghosts

      38

      Monopoly

      40

      The Kansas City Grand Emporium Blues

      41

      Should Have Seen It Coming

      42

      A Silver Flask

      43

      The Priest at Galileo’s Deathbed

      44

      Midnight, Snow and Stars

      47

      Planets, Houses, and the Night Always Above Us

      48

      On the Occasion of Andy’s Cancer Diagnosis

      49

      How to Successfully Flee the Storm

      51

      Hart Crane’s Borrowed Raincoat

      52

      Man Overboard

      53

      An Anatomy of the Celestial

      55

      The Glad Reaper

      Matching Coffee Mugs

      59

      The Woman Who Clears the Way

      60

      Blessings

      61

      The Awk Word

      62

      Eating Crow

      63

      The Word-Swallower

      64

      The Lessons of Moonlight

      66

      The Glad Reaper

      67

      The

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