Basic Training

<p>In the lineage of James Merrill and Philip Larkin the poems in <em>Basic Training</em> 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.</p>