In his 30th published volume, The Way of Myth: Stories’ Subtle Wisdom, Dennis Patrick Slattery reaches back in Part I: Mining the Myths Anew, to some earlier essays on classic films and works of literature. He also includes extended meditations on the thought of mythologist Joseph Campbell; on creativity’s hungers; on beliefs as mythic constructs; and on the joys of painting. Many of the essays explore the act of reading and the importance of stories as they relate to one’s personal myth.
In Part II: The Social Fabric of Stories, Slattery includes a series of 19 short op-ed essays on a range of topics: the classroom as sacred space; uncertainty; the fact of myth; compassion; moral injury; peace; the gifts of conversation; gall-bladder surgery; the ‘pan’-demic; and the poetics of myth, among others. Reflections on several of Joseph Campbell’s volumes are also included in this section.
The author’s reflective interests are trans-disciplinary, analogical and depth-psychological. These essays stretch out over many years of writing. Now, in this volume they are gathered so they can speak and engage one another to reveal the subtle wisdom of stories.
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.
From the Foreword by Phil Cousineau
