Smiling at the Executioner

M.B. McLatchey’s Smiling at the Executioner is a brilliant collection of poems inspired by the Stoic philosophy, but don’t let that stop you from enjoying these poems, which know how to live on their own, to take root in your heart. These are the kind of poems you hope you can remember to quote when in moments of uncertainty. McLatchey is not some one-trick theme artist who will sing you “I get knocked down, but I get up again”—NO!—she’s the one who will serve you images, sounds, and textures that make you want to read this book aloud. She will bring you the taste of bread, the promises of olives, the singing of hunger, and the love of desire.

—J.P. Dancing Bear, editor of Verse Daily

M.B. McLatchey pens these perspicacious, wise, and musically intelligent poems with a sincere gratitude for being alive in an era when “our histories are shadows on a wall; our memories rote lessons that flicker and mutate.” These masterfully crafted poems are an antidote to our complicated age of technology, machine-enforced intelligence, and screen-based isolation. They applaud every moment of humanity, from folding a fitted sheet to drawing a bath, for knowing “what we were, how to retrieve our former selves,” and for putting the necessary spirit back into spirituality.

—Jen Karetnick, Founder and Managing Editor of SWWIM, author of Inheritance with a High Error Rate, winner of the 2022 Cider Press Review Book Award

Smiling at the Executioner is a philosophical exploration of survival, love, marriage, men, family—and words—inspired by the Stoic mind, using image and metaphor from ancient and contemporary myth. Like an ancient story, this book is so rich it is hard to pick and choose—each poem a meditation on the Stoic desire to keep loving one another, and to persevere. When writing of forgiveness, McLatchey writes, “not a sinner’s crawl; a purging of the stench /of an unkept stall; a never forgotten love, /Penelope’s woven—and unwoven—shawl.”

—Lee (Lori) Desrosiers, Managing Editor/Publisher of Naugatuck River Review, author of Keeping Planes in the Air, Salmon Poetry