William Slattery
William Slattery’s poems and essays have appeared in The Magazine of Speculative Poetry, Poetry LA, Santa Clara Review, ONTHEBUS, The Herman Review, The Los Angeles Review of Los Angeles, Antioch Review, and elsewhere. His first book, Slattery's Wake, was written with the help of Alex M. Frankel's Saturday afternoon poetry workshop, that Slattery has attended since the years when it was co-anchored by Alex and Bob Foster at Beyond Baroque.
William Slattery’s poems and essays have appeared in The Magazine of Speculative Poetry, Poetry LA, Santa Clara Review, ONTHEBUS, The Herman Review, The Los Angeles Review of Los Angeles, Antioch Review, and elsewhere. His first book, Slattery's Wake, was written with the help of Alex M. Frankel's Saturday afternoon poetry workshop, that Slattery has attended since the years when it was co-anchored by Alex and Bob Foster at Beyond Baroque.
Slattery's Wake
Tom Laichas on Slattery's Wake:
The poet William Slattery is dead, and William Slattery — the deceased’s biographer, though no relation — attends his wake. Between the alcohol and the acid, this is the party your mother warned you about…. sex, psychedelia, campus politics, fortune-telling, death, quantum physics, poetics, New Jersey Irishry, God, and tequila. With a sly formalism, Slattery’s epic gives antic side-eye to Dante, Eliot, Joyce, and Berryman.
Martin Jago: "Comic, profane, tragic, and wildly inventive"
Frederick Pollack: "This is the most delightful book-length poem I’ve read in years."
Quoted passage:
“A Robert E. Lee of poetry —
on the wrong side, undersupplied,
reliant on audacity.
When I listened to his poems,
I thought them overly musical
and marred by odd grotesqueries.
I wished a better man than he
had wielded that poisoned pen,
a shining knight with a pointed lance
on an armored steed, someone noble,
not this rude serf tilling vintage verse —
but he rode up Parnassus on the ass
he was, more shambled than galloped.”
Tom Laichas on Slattery's Wake:
The poet William Slattery is dead, and William Slattery — the deceased’s biographer, though no relation — attends his wake. Between the alcohol and the acid, this is the party your mother warned you about…. sex, psychedelia, campus politics, fortune-telling, death, quantum physics, poetics, New Jersey Irishry, God, and tequila. With a sly formalism, Slattery’s epic gives antic side-eye to Dante, Eliot, Joyce, and Berryman.
Martin Jago: "Comic, profane, tragic, and wildly inventive"
Frederick Pollack: "This is the most delightful book-length poem I’ve read in years."
Quoted passage:
“A Robert E. Lee of poetry —
on the wrong side, undersupplied,
reliant on audacity.
When I listened to his poems,
I thought them overly musical
and marred by odd grotesqueries.
I wished a better man than he
had wielded that poisoned pen,
a shining knight with a pointed lance
on an armored steed, someone noble,
not this rude serf tilling vintage verse —
but he rode up Parnassus on the ass
he was, more shambled than galloped.”
© 2026 William Slattery
William Slattery was a Featured Poet at the October 2026 Second Sunday Poetry Series
William Slattery was a Featured Poet at the October 2026 Second Sunday Poetry Series