My Personal Favorite with Sarah J. Sloat
A Poetry Blog
This blog asks poets to answer this two-part question:
At this moment in time, which of your poems is your personal favorite, and why?
Sarah: This is a tough question for a poet, but at the moment, my favorite poem of mine is “Not My Business” from my new book, Classic Crimes. It’s a very short visual erasure, more of an aphorism or poetic moment.
the sands of time / had no counselor
I like the sly truth of it. No one would consciously think that time might need counseling, even if they agree that time is callous and unforgiving. Time doesn’t consider our feelings, it doesn’t give anyone a special pass. It has no sympathy and needs no advisor, no therapist. It is democratically ticking by, taking your health, your hopes, your illusions, sometimes your money, and eventually your life. I feel a dark humor in it.
Since my poems combine text and collage, the appeal of this poem to me is also visual. I want my visuals to be a springboard for the imagination. I like color and texture and subtlety, and I prefer not to draw any direct line to the text, e.g., if the text features a bell at the bottom of a pond, I will avoid including a bell or a pond.
The images used in this poem are, first of all, yellowing paper, which covers most of the page. The collage combines various elements, most prominently a straight-back chair, and beside it an illustration of surveyors scoping out a landscape. I salvaged much of this collage from another poem that got the boot. It struck me as something that could work with this text. Months later, taking a better look, I find a connection between the surveyors and the sands of time. And the empty chair suggests to me the absence of someone, in this case, perhaps the counselor.
***
Sarah J. Sloat’s poems, prose, and collage have appeared in Seneca Review, Diagram, Shenandoah, and many other publications. She is the author of the visual poetry collection Hotel Almighty (Sarabande 2020), as well as five poetry chapbooks, including Heiress to a Small Ruin and Excuse me while I wring this long swim out of my hair (Dancing Girl Press). Born in New Jersey, Sarah has lived for many years in Europe, where she works in news and splits her time between Frankfurt and Barcelona.
PRAISE FOR CLASSIC CRIMES:
“A true artist of the book, Sarah J. Sloat has transformed another text into one of her uniquely satisfying visual and literary works. Sloat is an artist of transformations who takes one literary artifact and transforms it into another. The results are surprising, witty, beautiful and strange—the way all good art is strange. Erasure and collage, in Sloat’s hands, are a kind of radical archeology in which she discovers a story hidden within the original text and which she uncovers, draws out, illuminates and raises up. Classic Crimes is a work of genius from a bold and visionary writer.”
—Mark Wunderlich, author of God of Nothingness
"What a crime it would be NOT to enter these crime scenes! The poetry echoes in what’s been lifted, elevated out of the detritus of foregone misdeeds. Only Sarah J. Sloat can achieve such levitation. With surprising variations in their collage elements, these visual poems rise as small wonders, each a perfect little balancing act between its text and images."
—Nance Van Winckel, author of Sister Zero
PRAISE FOR HOTEL ALMIGHTY:
"Absolutely marvelous."
—Mary Ruefle
"This book of erasure poems uses Stephen King’s Misery as its source text, highlighting themes of captivity and imagination. Sloat reproduces the original pages she used, adorned with fanciful collages on the erased sections."
—The New York Times Book Review
"Sloat’s brilliant erasures. . . are visual delights that transcend confinement."
—Kenyon Review
"Sarah J. Sloat’s Hotel Almighty (Sarabande, Sept.) goes all out with erasure and mixed-media collage to reimagine Stephen King’s Misery."
—Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal
"Hotel Almighty is a collection full of possibility and surprise. Of yes, misery and confinement, but also of playfulness and hope. It’s worth noting how unusual and thrilling it is to encounter a book of poems infused with so much color. The sophistication of the erasure pairs with the illustrative nature of collage to create a distinct mood, at times, like a subversive picture book for the Future Adult version of the kid drawing in the back of the room, who is too smart or dark or witty for the rest of the class."
—J.M. Farkas, The Rumpus
"Sloat finds dreamy delight in King’s suspenseful tale. . . . Each page is a poem revealed through erasure, strange word-flowers growing up from crayons, collage fragments, and loose threads that suggest a feminine hand."
—Electric Literature
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