[10/15/26] Schaefer, Philip: Pagan Era

Barrow Street Books, paperback

Publication Date: October 15, 2026

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Pagan's Era navigates an isolated Montana landscape, ruminating on nostalgia as the lines between the real and surreal blur. The poems dive deep, searching for peace in resolution. In seven letters to Satan himself, Schaefer meditates on his break from the 90s brand of Evangelical Christianity of his upbringing with a cynicism stemming more from sincerity than irony.

The isolated, rural Montana landscape of Philip Schaefer's Pagan Era melts a damaged external world into the voice of a speaker exorcising internal demons. These are deep-end poems that manage to dead-man-float toward mercy.