Hotel Almighty

AIGA 50 Books 50 Covers of 2020

The New York Times Book Review, “New & Noteworthy Poetry, from the Ancient Greeks to Billy Collins”

Library Journal, "Versifying / Collection Development: Poetry"

Academy of American Poets, “2020 Featured Fall Books” 

"Kenyon Review’s 2020 Holiday Reading Recommendations"

Electric Literature, "9 Graphic Poetry Collections that Reimagine Text and Image"

Neon Pajamas, "Favorite Authors (and Their Books) That I Read in 2020"

Hypoallergic, “Typographic Eye Candy”: 50 Standout Book Covers From 2020





“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."

—”New and Noteworthy Poetry, from the Ancient Greeks to Billy Collins,” The New York Times Book Review


"Sarah J. Sloat’s debut poetry collection, Hotel Almighty, is a visual feast. This assemblage of erasure poems and full-color collages is a fantastical, Rubik’s Cube of a delight."

—Kelly Fordon, New York Journal of Books


"Sloat’s brilliant erasures. . . are visual delights that transcend confinement."

—"Kenyon Review’s 2020 Holiday Reading Recommendations," 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."

—"Versifying / Collection Development: Poetry" by 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."

—"Misery Loves Company: A Conversation with Sarah J. Sloat" by J.M. Farkas, The Rumpus


"More in the spirit of play than protest, S. Jane Sloat creates poetry from prose, reconstituting the words and world of Stephen King’s Misery. Sloat finds dreamy delight in King’s suspenseful tale: ‘In an act of imagination/late at night./He threw back his head and/a variety of strange and poisonous flowers grew.’ These lines feel like they speak to the creative process in general and to this book in particular. 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, "9 Graphic Poetry Collections that Reimagine Text and Image"


"Sarah J. Sloat's visual spectacles feel like unique and refreshing dreamscapes. Where a table or desk transforms into a craft bonanza of vivid lines, vintage clippings, yarn, scissors, wallpaper, string. Hotel Almighty offers all of those things. Bring me erasure. Bring me poetry. Bring me analog collage. Bring me Misery on every damn page."

—"Favorite Authors (and Their Books) That I Read in 2020," Neon Pajamas


"Hotel Almighty will make your brain spin until the last page, weaving colorful paper cut-outs, vibrant dots, and gold threads with word-jewels excavated from Misery, bewildering you with a new sense of what poetry is capable of."

—Rhino


"At a time when many contemporary poets experiment with and teach erasure as a poetic technique, Sloat's collection showcases the many potentials of the form. Sloat's visual compositions occur on three or four levels at once, as she aligns the forms of the source text, the verbal text, the collage, and the collection. I believe this multi-level resonance sets new parameters for poetry. With her flexibility with syntax and fluid subjects, Sloat forges new insights that call us to question the way we relate to what confines us, and to re-set the limits of a poem. I've loved reading and re-reading Hotel Almighty. I find something new each time I open the book, and I continue to learn from the box of many boxes Sloat presents here."

—Diagram, online


"[Misery] explores the mode and function of artistic creation as it relates to life itself, the ways confinement and suffering can become means to radical opening. Sloat’s Hotel Almighty internalizes all of this, both commenting and building on King’s explorations in both the form and lyricism of her erasures."

—Dream Pop Journal, online


"Sloat’s work here belongs within the offbeat orthodoxy of found poetry; the popular label 'blackout poetry' certainly applies to her method of scratching out, painting over or otherwise obscuring printed text, thereby bringing novel messages to the surface. And yet these terms, which live in negative language, don’t fully capture Sloat’s sublime, unsettling outcomes. She coaxes Technicolor poetry from preexisting pages; new verse isn’t merely found—as in stumbled upon—but unearthed."

—The Curator


"[A]n innovative, compelling work of visual lyric."

—Women’s Voices for Change, online


"Hotel Almighty is a profound work of reinvention — from King’s pop fiction to a hybrid work where houses grow wild with flowers, where one asks hell to “subside a little” (42), and where the reader enjoys every minute of the bizarre, vivid, delightful journey."

—The Indianapolis Review


"This is the technical and dramatic pinnacle of erasure poetry."

—Naoko Fujimoto Poetry & Graphic Poetry


“Sarah J. Sloat’s erasure-collages create intimate and intricate pairings that ricochet back and forth between text and image. In one, a picture of a giant hand tenderly touching a tiny telephone speaks to the page’s mournful question, ‘If I could be / A dim shape slumped over / and round / Would that be so bad?’ In another, the erased text (‘The sound of the wind filled the phone / squeezing into the line / like a nerve awake at night’) is translated into red stitches approaching, then encircling a tree. Hotel Almighty is a marvel.”

—Matthea Harvey