In the lineage of James Merrill and Philip Larkin, the poems in Basic Training 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.
