Although I’ve written several of my own erasure poems, this is the first collection of erasure poetry I’ve read. It was suggested to me by my grad school faculty mentor as a way of expanding how I see different forms of poetry, specifically the interweaving of different mediums. In this collection, Sloat makes erasure poems out of pages from Stephen King’s novel, Misery. And although the collection is short (less than 90 pages of poetry), it still packs a massive artistic punch.
There several layers of artistic and poetic expression in these poems. The most obvious level is, of course, the erasure poetry. For those who don’t know, erasure poetry (or blackout poetry or found poetry) is when a writer takes an already existing text (usually prose) and creates a poem from specific words/phrases the poet selects. (I have a lot of blackout poems here on this blog, if you’d like different examples.) This is a difficult and somewhat tedious process because certain texts lend themselves to stronger poetic language than others. It takes a lot of focus and creativity to create an erasure poem, and often means that the poet has to let go of any desire for the poem to be “complete” or even “make sense.”
The next level is all the ways she erases the words around the poems. Some are erased with whiteout. Others are colored over with color pencil or crayon or charcoal. Others still are covered over by cut outs of vintage pictures or newspaper clippings. This is an especially interesting thing to note because they’re not all the same, but nor are they all different. This points to a kind of pattern of color and form between these poems. And since Sloat says at the beginning that she didn’t create these poems with any unifying narration or plot, the colors and different forms of actual erasure act as means of unifying the poems.
The next level is how Sloat incorporates other artistic forms along with the poems. On most of the pages, she includes different types of collage. Some are pasted images of different shapes (lots of circles of different sizes), others are color paint swabs or pictures of classical paintings cut apart. I found myself just as drawn to the art as I was to the poems themselves. And even though the images are companions to the poems, each one feels like its own manifestation of poetry.
Sometimes the collages seem to match the theme or emotional resonance of the poems, and other times I struggled to find any connection at all. This heightened my experience of reading this book which would, otherwise, have been a quick and somewhat listless read. This isn’t a criticism of Sloat, but rather an acknowledgement of the nature of erasure poetry. Since the poet is limited to what’s on the page, it means that even the really strong poems are going to be short. Adding collage is another way of bringing the reader into the process of making/receiving the poems.
But what I found most compelling was how the spirit of the original text still manages to leak through the poems. None of the poems are about a murderous former nurse who kidnaps her favorite writer, but they do point/dig into what it means to be a writer without actually posing a question (which, if you haven’t read Misery, a prominent theme throughout the novel is the question: what does it mean to be a writer?). In fact, each poem feels more like an answer to that question, or even a question that the writer knows but the reader doesn’t, which adds an even deeper layer to this book. Because while Misery asks what it means to be a writer, the story itself is actually about a specific writer (Paul Sheldon) who knows the answer to a question that a specific reader (Annie Wilkes) has asked, and he refuses to tell her the answer. It’s his one point of control over his captor. In this way, Hotel Almighty reenacts the plot of Misery by bringing the reader into Annie’s shoes.
And it’s fascinating because the poems don’t connect to Misery in any other overt ways. There’s no mention of Annie or Paul, no names, no professions, nothing to even identify where in the story we are (aside from page numbers, which Sloat leaves visible). Yet somehow, the narrator’s voice and even Stephen King’s writing style shine through from behind Sloat’s incredible art and poetry. It’s as if Paul Sheldon and Stephen King are illuminating Sloat’s poetic and artistic prowess.
I highly recommend this book to anyone who is looking for poetic inspiration. The boundaries that Sloat breaks down with this collection is astonishing. I’m keeping this one close by so that I can glean even more from it’s pages.
