Praise for Life History


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Life History

Ghost City Press (2020)

“The poems in Life History are a delight, a pleasure, a litany of sorrows. ‘I carry my grief in take-out boxes,’ writes Butler. And indeed, he does—in poems that explore isolation and loneliness as well as the deep, abiding joys of companionship. ‘Love of my life,’ the speaker’s beloved addresses him. ‘Fear of my fear,’ he answers. Here, angst is parceled into clever and compelling lines that serve to measure the weight and worth of experience. ‘We are all gold,’ he tells us, ‘precious, dirty metal / passed through a generation of hands.’”

— Danusha Laméris, author of Bonfire Opera and The Moons of August


“‘I wanted to make them think I'd quit but I won't quit,’ writes William Ward Butler in Life History, a chapbook full of poems that are so specifically themselves, they're interested in the world even when it isn't interesting or interested in them. There are echoes of Frank O'Hara here, but Frank O'Hara in California, and Frank O'Hara at the Bigfoot Discovery Museum, too. Do yourself a favor and read one of these poems, and then another. They are happening exactly in this moment. Right now.”

— Alex Dimitrov, author of Love and Other Poems and Together and by Ourselves


William Ward Butler

is the poet laureate of Los Gatos, California.

He is the author of the chapbook Life History from Ghost City Press, selected for the 2020 Poets House Showcase.

His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Breakwater Review, Bennington Review, fourteen poems, and other journals.

He has received support from the Catamaran Writing Conference, the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, the Community of Writers, and AWP’s Writer to Writer Mentorship Program.

He is a poetry reader for TriQuarterly, the literary magazine of Northwestern University.

He is the co-creator of Frozen Sea, an online poetry journal with an emphasis on publishing exceptional work from early-career poets in a mobile-friendly format.