What do you think?
Rate this book
Homebodies
In "Homebodies," Sarah J. Sloat coaxes voices from whisks and Monopoly tokens, from tea leaves and sponges, and gives a glimpse into the secret lives that run right under our noses, the eloquence in the tiny universes of the home.
- GenresPoetry
29 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 2012
About the author
Sarah J. Sloat
11 books371 followersI love poetry, literature and non-fiction.
Occasionally I go on a diet of short stories. I like the literary, the mainstream, the experimental and the un-categorical. I write poetry. I like the mysterious. I like history, too.
Long ago in another lifetime, I studied Chinese. I'm from NJ but have lived more than half my life outside the US.
As I get older I'm only interested in reading books that are wonderful and otherwise remarkable.
In poetry and otherwhere, the lower-case i/I doesn't bother me, nor does a lack of punctuation, etc.
Regarding my shelves, I won't be listing all the instruction manuals, young adult and children's books I've read unless there's something really important I want to say about them. Which I don't, mostly.
If you want to be-friend me, that's nice, but please do it for a reason other than upping your numbers or trying to sell me your book over & over! That's ridiculous. I wouldn't do that to you, though you should read my books.
Occasionally I go on a diet of short stories. I like the literary, the mainstream, the experimental and the un-categorical. I write poetry. I like the mysterious. I like history, too.
Long ago in another lifetime, I studied Chinese. I'm from NJ but have lived more than half my life outside the US.
As I get older I'm only interested in reading books that are wonderful and otherwise remarkable.
In poetry and otherwhere, the lower-case i/I doesn't bother me, nor does a lack of punctuation, etc.
Regarding my shelves, I won't be listing all the instruction manuals, young adult and children's books I've read unless there's something really important I want to say about them. Which I don't, mostly.
If you want to be-friend me, that's nice, but please do it for a reason other than upping your numbers or trying to sell me your book over & over! That's ridiculous. I wouldn't do that to you, though you should read my books.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
December 6, 2012
Don’t let the title Homebodies deceive you. Sarah J. Sloat’s new chapbook is anything but [a homebody]. Her poems are whimsical, funny and surreal. One of my favorites (not the favorite, to leave this quite clear, one of my favorites) is Etiquette which combines all these attributes and even throws in a pinch of something akin to chili pepper. Melancholy is to be found as well as the sheer enjoyment of words.
I delighted in this collection and have declared all 25 poems my favorites. This chapbook will find a place among my poetry books where I can always find it again, especially since it’s beautifully bound with a green ribbon winking at the back.
Can’t resist to quote the shortest one:
Spoon
found in the knife drawer
with its face
punched in
I delighted in this collection and have declared all 25 poems my favorites. This chapbook will find a place among my poetry books where I can always find it again, especially since it’s beautifully bound with a green ribbon winking at the back.
Can’t resist to quote the shortest one:
Spoon
found in the knife drawer
with its face
punched in
March 21, 2025
Sarah Sloat’s 25 page chapbook is a surrealist romp through the household. She puts a very unique twist on many everyday objects. You will never look at them the same again, whether your tea kettle, your mop or your toothbrush. The poems are often both humorous and tinged with dark. The princess phone is “stricken with eavesdropsy.” The toaster is a “Voodoo bungalow of crumbs/encumbered by hungers.” The wonderful alliteration in those lines is to be found in many of the poems as well. Toward the end of “Toaster” the world’s uglier burnings are gathered in as “somewhere a witch is burning” and “somewhere a yogi/goes over the coals.” That last appears to be walking over coals but also brought to mind both the self-immolation of some monks and the phrase “raked over the coals.”
The most dismal of the poems is the perpetually sad fate of the mop in “Scullery.”
Dribbling like an idiot, it droops
along the halls, swelling soot
with transferred damp. Dear filth.
Final stanza:
When the job’s done, the unkempt
head is found face down in the tub.
“Whisk” is probably the most jolly of the objects although there’s a sense of it lurking.
Do you spin in your sleep, dervish
with your freakish hair
your splintering whip
Further on:
When you sense the baker set to work
what do you whisper to the scissors
This animated household is coming to you through a mature, sure surrealist voice who knows her predecessors as shown by her cento “Quite at Home” in which she has arranged lines from Fargue, Apollinaire, Cesaire, Breton, Reverdy, Michaux, Cendrars and Giroux. Anyone familiar with the moderns will be amused by one poem’s title “sPonge.” In the nine part prose poem “Wine Cellar” humor also arises out of mixing a variety of diction. In the section “Haut Saumille Bordeaux” we get a voice that mixes high, advertising, and casual language so that we are surprised at nearly every turn:
Big bells are ringing in this. Here is a full-blooded wine, promiscuous and rich in after-rush, guaranteed to improve your French pronunciation. It’s come-hither bouquet evokes chestnut and late September. It’s nose is true brunette, authentic and nutsy. The cinnamon finish is long, like all the next day long.
A few poems in this collection are not surrealist but still delight. In fact, two of my favorites in the collection, “On Waking I think of Winter” and “Ghazal with Broken Birds,” are not. The first is still about altered perception, mixing as often happens when waking, dream-like images with those of real life:
And I wake like Jack London, only less
bearded, less brave, though the brown kiss of a dog
assists me
It ends with a haunting stanza:
And I think of winter as I always do at dawn
and always did, before I guessed
what winter was
The ghazal is one of the best examples of the form I’ve read. It flits around love and passion in a tentative fashion and Sloat puts a wonderful refrain through its paces, not only repeating it but also achieving the rhyme in the word before. Here are the second and third stanzas.
My little craft zigzags the aisles of the sea. Clarity has its price, and the flare I ignite clothes the boat in smoke.
Come neither dressed nor undressed, come half-crippled, come hale; come bridelike in white finery, come afloat in smoke.
This chapbook packs a lot of delight in 25 pages. A few of the poems are a bit flat but the majority are so lively the collection as a whole dances and invites instant rereading. It’s like a quirky club that we don’t want to leave because of its eccentric patrons, who are “all a little alien yet quite at home.”
The most dismal of the poems is the perpetually sad fate of the mop in “Scullery.”
Dribbling like an idiot, it droops
along the halls, swelling soot
with transferred damp. Dear filth.
Final stanza:
When the job’s done, the unkempt
head is found face down in the tub.
“Whisk” is probably the most jolly of the objects although there’s a sense of it lurking.
Do you spin in your sleep, dervish
with your freakish hair
your splintering whip
Further on:
When you sense the baker set to work
what do you whisper to the scissors
This animated household is coming to you through a mature, sure surrealist voice who knows her predecessors as shown by her cento “Quite at Home” in which she has arranged lines from Fargue, Apollinaire, Cesaire, Breton, Reverdy, Michaux, Cendrars and Giroux. Anyone familiar with the moderns will be amused by one poem’s title “sPonge.” In the nine part prose poem “Wine Cellar” humor also arises out of mixing a variety of diction. In the section “Haut Saumille Bordeaux” we get a voice that mixes high, advertising, and casual language so that we are surprised at nearly every turn:
Big bells are ringing in this. Here is a full-blooded wine, promiscuous and rich in after-rush, guaranteed to improve your French pronunciation. It’s come-hither bouquet evokes chestnut and late September. It’s nose is true brunette, authentic and nutsy. The cinnamon finish is long, like all the next day long.
A few poems in this collection are not surrealist but still delight. In fact, two of my favorites in the collection, “On Waking I think of Winter” and “Ghazal with Broken Birds,” are not. The first is still about altered perception, mixing as often happens when waking, dream-like images with those of real life:
And I wake like Jack London, only less
bearded, less brave, though the brown kiss of a dog
assists me
It ends with a haunting stanza:
And I think of winter as I always do at dawn
and always did, before I guessed
what winter was
The ghazal is one of the best examples of the form I’ve read. It flits around love and passion in a tentative fashion and Sloat puts a wonderful refrain through its paces, not only repeating it but also achieving the rhyme in the word before. Here are the second and third stanzas.
My little craft zigzags the aisles of the sea. Clarity has its price, and the flare I ignite clothes the boat in smoke.
Come neither dressed nor undressed, come half-crippled, come hale; come bridelike in white finery, come afloat in smoke.
This chapbook packs a lot of delight in 25 pages. A few of the poems are a bit flat but the majority are so lively the collection as a whole dances and invites instant rereading. It’s like a quirky club that we don’t want to leave because of its eccentric patrons, who are “all a little alien yet quite at home.”
March 5, 2013
[This review appears in the current issue of Literary Bohemian.]
There’s no place like home, and no one can expose its hidden dramas as deftly as Sarah J. Sloat. In her third collection of poems, Homebodies (previous collections are Excuse Me While I Wring This Long Swim Out of My Hair and In the Voice of a Minor Saint), Sloat gives us a glimpse into the lives of everyday objects—and what a revelation it is. Here there be toaster, toothbrush, kettle, whisk, mop, and sponge. Even a Princess phone! The faucet is “the saddest instrument, / its only song: de-plete, de-plete.” The whisk is a dervish, a frothmonger, while the mop dribbles “like an idiot.”
Sloat’s writing is fresh, vivid, always surprising, and her love of language is contagious. You’ll want to read aloud for the sheer lingual thrill, the taste and texture of “tangled ganglia,” “startling alarms,” a “drowsy growl,” “the thumbsuck, the meat stuck under the fingernail.” In “Wine Cellar,” Maison Langue Merlot “unbuttons the tongue.” Maison Vigniot Sancerre is “thin but delicious like rain.” And the Chateau Bonmot Syrah “enters the mouth like an intruder and bursts into song.” A line may turn a corner when you least expect it, taking you somewhere you had no idea you wanted to go (oh, but you do!): “Little house, in death the snow/will cover you like a doily.”
The homeliest of objects are here transformed from ordinary to extraordinary, and Sloat’s images are sometimes surreal, sometimes strikingly beautiful. Spending time with these poems feels like curling up with a box of chocolates – except that the poems are entirely guilt-free and more delicious. Savor them.
Here's one to whet your appetite.
Toaster
Voodoo bungalow of crumbs,
encumbered by small hungers
how many evenings have I breathed
your vesper float of smoke,
how many mornings have I warmed
my hands over your burnt offerings?
Inside twin slits sit rows of filament,
aglow as kitchen brimstone. Snug
pulpit of hellfire, designed
to suck softness dry,
your task turns oat and wheat
to gold, exhales a fraught aroma.
With every trip of the lever,
how close I come to transformation –
somewhere a witch is burning,
somewhere a yogi goes
over the coals.
Sarah Sloat's fourth collection, Inksuite, is now available from Dancing Girl Press.
There’s no place like home, and no one can expose its hidden dramas as deftly as Sarah J. Sloat. In her third collection of poems, Homebodies (previous collections are Excuse Me While I Wring This Long Swim Out of My Hair and In the Voice of a Minor Saint), Sloat gives us a glimpse into the lives of everyday objects—and what a revelation it is. Here there be toaster, toothbrush, kettle, whisk, mop, and sponge. Even a Princess phone! The faucet is “the saddest instrument, / its only song: de-plete, de-plete.” The whisk is a dervish, a frothmonger, while the mop dribbles “like an idiot.”
Sloat’s writing is fresh, vivid, always surprising, and her love of language is contagious. You’ll want to read aloud for the sheer lingual thrill, the taste and texture of “tangled ganglia,” “startling alarms,” a “drowsy growl,” “the thumbsuck, the meat stuck under the fingernail.” In “Wine Cellar,” Maison Langue Merlot “unbuttons the tongue.” Maison Vigniot Sancerre is “thin but delicious like rain.” And the Chateau Bonmot Syrah “enters the mouth like an intruder and bursts into song.” A line may turn a corner when you least expect it, taking you somewhere you had no idea you wanted to go (oh, but you do!): “Little house, in death the snow/will cover you like a doily.”
The homeliest of objects are here transformed from ordinary to extraordinary, and Sloat’s images are sometimes surreal, sometimes strikingly beautiful. Spending time with these poems feels like curling up with a box of chocolates – except that the poems are entirely guilt-free and more delicious. Savor them.
Here's one to whet your appetite.
Toaster
Voodoo bungalow of crumbs,
encumbered by small hungers
how many evenings have I breathed
your vesper float of smoke,
how many mornings have I warmed
my hands over your burnt offerings?
Inside twin slits sit rows of filament,
aglow as kitchen brimstone. Snug
pulpit of hellfire, designed
to suck softness dry,
your task turns oat and wheat
to gold, exhales a fraught aroma.
With every trip of the lever,
how close I come to transformation –
somewhere a witch is burning,
somewhere a yogi goes
over the coals.
Sarah Sloat's fourth collection, Inksuite, is now available from Dancing Girl Press.
October 14, 2012
My chap from Hyacinth Girl Press.
The poems center on household things - toothbrushes, toast, leaky faucets.
Here's a segment of a prose poem selection on wine:
Eauvain Beaujolais
A round young wine that can’t concentrate. Elastic body with an acrobatic, almost chewable bosom. The finish evokes mink, kerosene and low satire. Toothsome and juked up with pepper, this Beaujolais is two-thirds woodsmoke, one-third brioche. Can easily be paired with Chopin or Satie, but does not mix well with Dutch conductors.
Maison Langue Merlot
Unbuttons the tongue. The bouquet includes the calls of wild animals, far off, fur bristling with an electric zip of rubies. Fruit falls from the trees. Violets tremble at the edge of the glass. Accompany with a plump cigar and anything by Balzac. Best served by the goblet.
The poems center on household things - toothbrushes, toast, leaky faucets.
Here's a segment of a prose poem selection on wine:
Eauvain Beaujolais
A round young wine that can’t concentrate. Elastic body with an acrobatic, almost chewable bosom. The finish evokes mink, kerosene and low satire. Toothsome and juked up with pepper, this Beaujolais is two-thirds woodsmoke, one-third brioche. Can easily be paired with Chopin or Satie, but does not mix well with Dutch conductors.
Maison Langue Merlot
Unbuttons the tongue. The bouquet includes the calls of wild animals, far off, fur bristling with an electric zip of rubies. Fruit falls from the trees. Violets tremble at the edge of the glass. Accompany with a plump cigar and anything by Balzac. Best served by the goblet.
November 25, 2012
i love when people see entire worlds in everyday objects or situations - sarah sloat does this particularly well, not only in this chapbook. my favourites are "Scullery" (about a mop), "Ghazal with Broken Birds", "Wine Cellar" (very original descriptions of wines, I dare say different from any you've come across before), "Toaster". beautiful and surprising word choices throughout. read it if you can!
February 4, 2016
I love the conceit of these odes. My favorite poem was Wine Cellar. So many great lines in this collection. I have a feeling I will keep returning to these poems.
June 22, 2016
I love how items around the home come alive as new creations in this wonderfully imaginative collection of poems. In "Monopoly Tokens" the game pieces take on new, unexpected, and pleasing characteristics; in "Wine Cellar" champagne becomes "Not the body but the mind. Not the crown but the tiara. Not the prayer but the hallelujah." I especially love the "Ghazal with Broken Birds", the ghazal form being a favorite of mine and the fact that the poet makes the ghazal so lyrical and fresh.
Sarah Sloat really has a knack for beautiful poems with the sense of the absurd mixed with deeper meaning and wisdom.
Sarah Sloat really has a knack for beautiful poems with the sense of the absurd mixed with deeper meaning and wisdom.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews