Born in Cumberland, Maryland,
Shaffer was educated at the University of Maryland and Southern Illinois
University. Trained in the sciences, he was later drawn to the fine arts
and literature as a painter, sculptor, conceptual artist and poet.
Catagorization of poetic forms is
a very imprecise endeavor. Amidst conflicting definitions, poems
frequently fall appropriately into several categories. Abstract poetry
and nonsense poetry are quite similar, for example, as are calligrams and
concrete poems. Also, children's poetry is often considered a subset of
comic verse and light verse and narrative poems may also be prose poems
and at the same time, other types of poetry.