Articles by Gregory Wolfe

In the days since Warren Farha passed away, suddenly, at the age of 70—a man I knew and loved for nearly 35 years—the overwhelming sense-impression that floods my memory is the way he used to hug me.

W.H. Auden’s phrase, “poetry makes nothing happen,” has been misinterpreted: instead of saying that literature is ineffectual, Auden was simply resisting the idea that literature should be reduced to propaganda. Indeed, a couple lines below the phrase Auden writes that poetry “survives, / A way of happening, a mouth.” Literature, in short, doesn’t put up barricades; it is, rather, a “mouth” that makes the “nothing” of words happen.

“There’s no money in poetry,” the poet and novelist Robert Graves once quipped, “but there’s no poetry in money, either.” It’s the time of year when I write to ask you to reverse Graves’s idea—in short, I am asking you to “poeticize” a little of your money by supporting the mission of the little indie literary press known as Slant Books.

As Slant Books wraps up its second year as an indie, nonprofit press, I’m full of gratitude for the authors and readers who have come together under our auspices to form a true “Republic of Letters.” And I’m writing now to ask you to help us grow and flourish in the years to come.

Almost exactly a year ago, Slant Books announced that it was becoming an independent, non-profit publisher. It was a bold, if not quixotic, thing to do at a time when a faltering economy has seen a number of small presses and journals closing their doors forever. Twelve months later….

Last month Slant announced that we are now an independent, not-for-profit press. As the year draws to a close and the giving season is upon us, it’s worth asking: why offer financial support to an indie literary press that avoids fads, ideologies, and tribalisms of all kinds in favor of exquisitely crafted language that wrestles with perennial themes?

Dear Friends of Slant Books: It is with great pleasure that we announce that Slant has become a fully independent, not-for-profit press.
We are eager to launch into this new chapter in our story, but first a word of explanation….

Every day, amid the maelstrom of words, images, and sounds that besiege us, we experience the unfortunate truth that communication is not the same as communion. Communion, of course, is the higher goal—not a mere exchange of information or ideas, but a deeper sense of solidarity grounded in our shared humanity.

He liked to be called El Santo (Spanish for “the Saint”). In almost anyone else on the planet it would be considered a sort of spiritual vanity or pretension. But in the case of Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete, it was both a joke and a piece of deep theological wisdom.

Slant’s Publisher & Editor on why humanism remains a vital tradition–indeed, more urgently needed than ever in a time when politicization and ideology are reducing art to propaganda and groupthink–and how a book publisher committed to humanism and literary craft can help us learn how to “sound together.”

This is not how we envisioned the debut of Close Reading, the new blog sponsored by Slant Books. Nor is this the post we intended to serve as the virtual champagne bottle that we would smash on the prow of our spanking new literary vessel. We took for granted that the launch would take place under “normal” circumstances.