Gregory Wolfe

Hard to believe it's been one whole year here on the Salish Sea. It feels like we have been squatting in an Air BnB property this whole time. Deo gratias.

Coming soon from Slant Books.

You Will be Wounded - Slant Books If you polled every last person in the world, I’m sure you’d find that, at one point or another, they've written a poem. Not the Haiku assigned in third grade. I’m thinking of the visceral thing compo...

“I couldn’t have told you exactly why I hid it. Or maybe I could have. I was a boy on the edge. Poetry was a liability. But, then, what of the title? What else could that mean but, ‘please understand me.’”

Read Bryan Halferty’s post for Close Reading here: slantbooks.org/close-readin...

This is a big deal, folks. "Close Reading" is going to find a lot of new readers on Substack. Maybe you will be one of them? slantbooks.substack.com

Can it be True? - Slant Books Utilitarian reading (AI) considers words as symbols referring only to other symbols like them. Words are therefore interchangeable, fungible—place holders for each other. AI obligingly sorts the symbo...

What is the impact of AI on reading? George Dardess on utilitarian vs. "close" reading, today at Slant's Close Reading blog. slantbooks.org/close-readin...

See below from a David French op-ed today in the NYT. I entitled an editorial statement in IMAGE with this phrase in ***1994***. But now it's been coined by someone in 2025. This is another reason why I have become a Grumpy Old Man. If only they'd listened to me 31 years ago....

I get a lot of emails -- most are forgettable. This one, from a writer who had submitted a MS to Slant, is not.

Yours Truly pulling double duty as Theseus & Oberon in A Midsummer Nights Dream, ably assisted by Puck, with the MAT in Classical Education at Eastern University Players.

Pattiann Rogers is preeminently a poet who reveals to us the "spiritual realities alive in the natural world." Peggy Rosenthal explains, today on Slant's Close Reading blog. slantbooks.org/close-readin...

A Review of Matters for You Alone by Leslie Williams Review by Carla Sarett

"It is curious given the centrality of friendship in our lives that today’s poets seem to have so little to say about it." Fabulous review of Leslie Williams's "Matters for You Alone." newversereview.substack.com/p/a-review-o...

How to Find Your Way Home - Slant Books I’m rereading Paradise, Victoria Redel’s most recent collection of poems. Beginning with some midrashic poems, retellings of the story of the Garden of Eden, the book moves on to poems about family, c...

"Every time you return to a text you have already read, it will reveal more of itself to you. Or, more accurately, perhaps, with each rereading more of yourself may be revealed to you." Rick Chess, today at Slant's Close Reading blog. slantbooks.org/close-readin...

Becoming a Close Reader - Slant Books In this post, I’d like to share with you the story of my career as a close reader. I wonder whether your experience is anything like it. I wonder, too, whether this kind of career is possible today, i...

The Autobiography of a Close Reader, today at Slant's Close Reading blog. slantbooks.org/close-readin...

In the immortal words of my immortal beloved, today we celebrate 41 years of "wedded piss."

In Search of Beauty with the Eastern University MAT in Classical Education gang.

Turning Hitler into Art? Part Two - Slant Books My question throughout my reading of these three very different treatments of Hitler, has been: What theme—if any—unifies them, beyond the scandal of their subject? I suggest that that theme has to do...

In part 2 of George Dardess's essay on artists who depicted Hitler & his circle, he argues that these artists sought "to puncture the complacency of those who insist that murderous despots like Hitler are not members of the human race." slantbooks.org/close-readin...

In the last 12 months Slant has lost 3 submissions because the MSS submitted won major national literary prizes. So I guess that means we're doing something right....

Child of These Tears - Slant Books COMING SOON! In the early years of the eighteenth century, the settlers living in the hamlet of Hartfield Falls in “English America” face the looming threat posed by historical and political forces be...

Dust jacket copy about this fabulous, not-to-be-missed forthcoming novel, is now up on our website. Check it out and put the publication date in your calendar. slantbooks.org/books/child-...

The Forest Fires of Amnesia - Slant Books Cervantes played with the tradition of chivalric romances, just as Shakespeare echoed (on at least one occasion, in Hamlet, mockingly) the Latin plays of Seneca. These authors reveal a paradoxical pat...

"We go forward by looking back. The new literary experience is founded in literary memory. Originality is imitative, and writing is most of the moment when it remembers the past." Amit Majmudar, today at Slant's Close Reading blog. slantbooks.org/close-readin...

COVER REVEAL: Friends, I cannot convey to you how enthused I am about this utterly haunting, profound, heart-smasher of a historical novel, coming this fall from Slant. More info to come soon.

"With a bit of language, I attempt to give shape to the ineffable, that which is beyond words.” -- Eric Pankey. Peggy Rosenthal shows how Pankey does this in his new collection, "Vanishments," today at Slant's Close Reading blog. slantbooks.org/close-readin...

Alexander Trocchi, Cain, and Heroin - Slant Books I’ve become slightly obsessed with a writer named Alexander Trocchi. Trocchi was a Scottish writer born in Glasgow in 1925. He probably should have died of a heroin overdose, since he was addicted to ...

Morgan Meis is troubled by the story of Cain & Abel, which he views through the lens of a heroin-addicted writer once called "cosmopolitan scum." Today at Slant's Close Reading blog. slantbooks.org/close-readin...

YouTube video by Stephen Haven Stephen Haven DMQ Virtual Salon

A Soupçon of Poetry: over at Disquieting Muses Quarterly (great name!), poet Stephen Haven reads from "The Flight from Meaning" (Slant) for a mere eight minutes. youtu.be/BqQCCIUmukI

Slant Welcomes a Managing Editor - Slant Books We are delighted to announce that Emily Kwilinski, Ph.D. is joining our team as Slant’s Managing Editor. Emily comes to us with a wide array of skills and experiences perfectly suited to expanding Sla...

BREAKING: Slant Books welcomes Emily Starr Kwilinski as Managing Editor. To learn more, follow the link. Congratulations, Emily! slantbooks.org/news/slant-w...

#31: Book Launch Event for "Vanishments" SlantCast · Episode

[AUDIO VERSION] Come for the wonderful poetry reading, stay on for the incredibly lively Q&A session. Eric Pankey's book launch for "Vanishments," just out from Slant Books. BTW, you can find SlantCast on ALL the podcast platforms open.spotify.com/episode/0N4m...

YouTube video by Slant Books SLANTCAST Episode #31: Book Launch for "Vanishments"

Come for the wonderful poetry reading, stay on for the incredibly lively Q&A session. Eric Pankey's book launch for "Vanishments." #poetry youtu.be/Ra9DBHamIiA?...

Beginning and Ending: Louise Bogan’s “The Alchemist” - Slant Books “I have never started a poem whose end I knew,” Robert Frost said, because “writing a poem is discovering.” But how do writers know when they’ve discovered the end? How do we know when a piece of writ...

Louise Bogan's poem "The Alchemist" is about breaking down and being transformed. William E. Cain investigates, today at Slant's Close Reading blog. slantbooks.org/close-readin...

Read an Excerpt from Vanishments - Slant Books In his eighteenth collection of poetry, Eric Pankey continues his forty-year investigation into how and what one can know in this world and beyond it. The poet, Jane Hirshfield, says about his poetry,...

Taste & see! Read an excerpt from Eric Pankey's haunting, contemplative new poetry collection, "Vanishments," just published by Slant. slantbooks.org/news/read-an...

Words for the Passing Moment: Q&A with Eric Pankey - Slant Books In my poems, I tend to be drawn to moments where things that we perceive are just on the verge of perceptibility—a presence leaning toward absence, an absence coalescing into perhaps a presence. The p...

Read this illuminating Q&A with poet Eric Pankey about his collection "Vanishments," just published by Slant. slantbooks.org/close-readin...

Terry McDonagh - A Review of Stephen Haven’s - The Flight From Meaning - Live Encounters The Flight from Meaning by Stephen Haven book review by Terry McDonagh. Live Encounters Poetry & Writing June 2025.

"This work is no flight from meaning – it’s the exact opposite – no ambiguity – it’s a headlong flight into meaning – an escape from one-dimensional thinking..." Terry McDonagh reviews Stephen Haven's new collection from Slant. liveencounters.net/terry-mcdona...

HAPPY PUBLICATION DAY TO ERIC PANKEY! Join us tonight for the live book launch event for "Vanishments," his stunning new poetry collection (Slant). Registration required: see link in comment. us02web.zoom.us/meeting/regi...