Domestirexia: Poems

by JoAnna Novak

A poetry collection contorting the idea of home away from being a site of comfort and nourishment by coaxing the reader to think about domesticity in knotty new ways

Domestirexia goes beyond the entanglement of "domestic" and "anorexia” exploring a behind-closed-doors sensuality, borne in the concept of making home.

Home can be a space of both resistance and discomfort that one desires or takes pleasure in enjoying. Rote notions of home and the domestic are reimagined in these poems as estranging, excessive, and populated by unknowable characters. Exploring themes of family, sacrifice, disease, death, money, cooking, romance, sex, art, and the visceral qualities of the everyday, the poems twist themselves into binds for the reader to undo or surrender to.

Quarantined at her in-law’s house during Covid, Novak wrote these poems while watching The Great British Baking Show , reading The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People , skimming Grimm Brothers fairy tales, and babysitting an infant. These are poems about wanting to misbehave. Light voyeurism at home, with gin and cake.

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Paperback

Published July 16, 2024

About the author

JoAnna Novak is the author of seven books, most recently, DOMESTIREXIA: Poems and the critically-acclaimed memoir Contradiction Days: A Writer on the Verge of Motherhood. Her short story collection Meaningful Work won the Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Contest and was published by FC2. She is the author of the novel I Must Have You and three books of poetry: New Life; Abeyance, North America; and Noirmania.

JoAnna’s work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The New York Times, The Atlantic, BOMB, VQR, American Short Fiction, Conjunctions, and other publications. Her essay “My $1000 Anxiety Attack” was anthologized in About Us: Essays from the Disability Series of The New York Times. She is a co-founder of the literary journal and chapbook publisher, Tammy.

JoAnna holds a PhD in Creative Writing & Literature from the University of Southern California, as well as an MFA in Poetry from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and an MFA in Fiction from Washington University in St. Louis. She divides her time between Chicago and Los Angeles.

Reviews

[Kayla - the.bookish.mama]

This is the first work by Joanna Novak that I have read, and a friend had told me she has a very distinct voice and after reading I definitely understand what she meant. Joanna is a master of alliteration and the use of homonyms. When it comes to crafting the poem she really makes every line work for the speaker of the poem.

Honestly, I didn’t always “understand” the poems. This isn’t to say that they are bad or anything of that nature, but I was often left thinking “What did I just read?” However. I think that can be one of the many beauties of poetry, where you can acknowledge that something is well done, or even good, without fully understanding the complete work, because you can still appreciate it for what it is.

I received this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

[Kent · Rating 4 out of 5]

Abbreviation in poetry is like when you press a divot into clay. Its brief gesture meant to be something, but not entirely what something it is. Or it’s learning to sketch, specifically where you feather short lines so they layer on one another. What I’m thinking about here is abbreviation as a gesture, and what the body feels like making that gesture. And while I can imagine what goes into a gesture like this, it’s often difficult for me to feel the poetry abbreviations are meant to constitute. Or what it intends In Novak’s book, where abbreviation often speaks to a woman’s perspective on the world. Maybe it’s the brief poetic observation that quickly concedes to more practical matters. Like living in a house and looking out the window. Or living in a house and having guests over. Or living in a house with a man and what I sometimes read to be his kids. Maybe the poet’s. It’s complicated. And abbreviated.

Which is the kind of work I read in Mary Jo Bang’s A Doll for Throwing: Poems. Where assertion extends past the language. And when I read I just know this as a feature. I’m expecting it. Many of Bang’s poems operate with tight, mannered sentiment, and they put me in mind of a type of speaker. In A Doll for Throwing it’s a commentary on men who will indulge abstract discussion of object-ness, but then can’t see their objectification of women in that discussion. In Novak, I don’t see the sharp angle that would develop the type of speaker. It uses a contemporary trope involving a woman who’s reached middle age and can see how life changes with age. And, for my reading, at least, the poems show an awareness they are participating in that contemporary trope. It’s hard, for instance, to imagine they aren’t showing deference to Mary Jo Bang’s work. And then directing it to a domestic life the poet feels included in and alienated from at the same time. In Novak’s book the domestic comes with anxiety and genuine comfort that she can see its existence. And like other books in this vein, she realizes who she is now, what she was, how what she was likely complicates this person she is now, and now there’s a whole family she’s authored (via partnership and birth) who she attends to and who will be consistently drawing her attention to them.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Domestrexia was my introduction to the work of JoAnna Novak. This contemporary writer is one that has interested me as of recently. While a writer in many forms I started with her recent poetry collection (mainly due to it being the one available at my library).

This collection offers a handful of poems that capture surreal imagery and creative wordplay. It was an enjoyable read but I’m not sure how much of a lasting impact it leaves on me. In a year of heavy poetry reading it is hard to stand out. I do think this collection stands out among the others I’ve read but when it comes to leaving a lasting impact I’m not sure it breaks out above the more experimental works I’ve read.

Even still I am mostly favorable to this collection. While brief, this was an enjoyable read and really shows that Novak is a writer to pay attention to in this current era. The poems vaguely connect, in subject matter, but also word association. The usage of a unique word in one poem just to reuse it in another way a few poems later is always a favorite technique of mine.

Mostly this collection just gets me interested in reading more from Novak. The longer poems were the ones that drew me in most and have me interested in reading her novels and short stories. If this is any indication of her writing ability there is far more to discover and enjoy.

Favorite Poems: Genoise with Mallow Rose, Hide The House in the House, Todd at the Cemetery,

[Scott Eggerding · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interpersonal friction and internal fractures, collages of flora fauna and flour, juxtaposition of the mundane and the mad, new words that should be words and common words in uncommon contexts. JoAnna Novak’s poems drift from the concrete to the ethereal. Whether cooking or playing solitaire, waking every two hours with the baby or watching the neighbor fix the house, everything leads to and through Domestirexia. The language is Sensual. Sensuous. Nauseous. Nauseating. A feast of words for the hungry and those starving themselves. “She kept going, guzzling, folding flour into air.”

[Khepre · Rating 3 out of 5]

Intriguing but not moving. There was connections of making a home and events as the author had proclaimed in the back cover. However, the connections felt jarring and felt like there was details and a physical bind to fully encompass the poetry collection.

[Carina Stopenski · Rating 2 out of 5]

i don't think this style of poetry is for me--while the words were pretty, i didn't feel like there was a lot of substance. i like when poetry makes me feel and think critically, and this one fell short in my opinion.

[Tina · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed reading DOMESTIREXIA by JoAnna Novak! The title is a combination of domestic and anorexia and these poems are about longing and estrangement. I liked how part one featured poems of couplets and then parts two to five had varied poems of prose and longer lengths. I liked the references to Dali and O’Keefe, and Butterick, Simplicity and Vogue pattern books, and how one poem was in French. My fave poems are Dear Aries and , and as It Ought to Be. I really like the collage art style of the cover too! The art of poetry is beautiful!

Thank you to Soft Skull Press for my gifted review copy!