William Ward Butler
is the poet laureate of Los Gatos, California.
He is the author of the chapbook Life History from Ghost City Press. His recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Bennington Review, Denver Quarterly, Five Points, RHINO, Switchyard, and other journals.
He is the co-creator of Frozen Sea, an online poetry journal publishing exceptional work from early-career poets in a mobile-friendly format. He is also a poetry reader for TriQuarterly, the literary magazine of Northwestern University.
Photo by Nicholas Nichols
Praise for Life History
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
“William Ward Butler's Life History is a resolution to survival, to finding the small joys that give meaning to the ordinariness of being. An acute observer, he is a poet attuned to the inexplicable nature of love, what can and can’t be said out loud.”
— Jacques J. Rancourt, author of In the Time of PrEP and Brocken Spectre
Pleasures
of the Flesh
Ghost City Press (2024)
A free, digital micro-chapbook released by Ghost City Press in 2024.