~From the Foreword by Phil Cousineau

“In The Way of Myth, the culminating book of the prolific Dennis Patrick Slattery’s career, I find an abundance of wonder and a plenitude of what the poet-astronomer Rebecca Elson called our ‘responsibility to awe.’ For him, mythology is everywhere if only we develop “the mythic slant,” the ability to see its wild wisdom all around us. What vitalizes his writing is how he encourages the reader to venture beyond theory to experience one of the least appreciated aspects of mythology—the sheer joy that can come from identifying with its characters—to the point where we no longer feel alone in our own struggles.

The sheer range here of essays, poems, reminiscences, reviews and retellings underscores Slattery’s ardent belief that mythmaking is one of the constants in cultures throughout history. I especially value his uncanny awareness of what he calls the ‘weathervanes of the soul,’ the cultural devices, if you will, found in art, literature, theater and cinema, as well as in sports, religion, psychiatry, nature and our romantic lives, which indicate the direction of our mythologically-inclined minds.”