This book of poems may be unique, in one way. Jeffery Paine spent nearly sixty years (!) working on this, his first collection-for six decades in odd hours writing and rewriting, reworking and revising, honing and beginning anew. JP decided not to publish a single poem till this small-scale whole shebang was ready; also he tried not to write what might be, in essence, the same poem twice. (JP, with the Nobel Prize-winning poet Joseph Brodsky, did however edit a fat anthology of modern international poems: The Poetry of Our World.) In other genres JP published widely but he may be best known for ushering Eastern culture and spirituality to popular audiences in the West. "Jeffery Paine is an unusual voice in American letters," so observed Indian novelist and Undersecretary General of the United Nations Shashi Tharoor, "one steeped in the wisdom of the East and yet infused with a knowing and witty sensibility that is profoundly Western." Although JP's books Father India, Re-enchantment: Tibetan Buddhism Comes to the West, and Enlightenment Town were each named in various media a "Best Book of the Year," they didn't make him rich, i. e. provide a livable income. He thus indulged his penchant for working in older buildings. JP helped manage the oldest hotel in Amsterdam (dating from 1654). He worked in advertising, partly because the office was the oldest house in San Francisco (converted). He edited a magazine in the Smithsonian Castle in Washington DC, his office being where once Abraham Lincoln came to view official parades. He taught specialized literature in Descartes' bedroom. That's about the respectable side of it. Since Eternity, Speak with This Living Man took six decades, JP's next book of poetry, if published, will be published in a parallel universe.
