sarahjsloat

Before January evaporates I thought I would list the books I read last year, which I like to do because I spend a lot of time reading.

I’ve been trying to make a summary of last year without slipping into the negative, so I’d like to single out a wonderful thing that happened in 2023: my second book of visual poetry was accepted by Sarabande.

We managed to get out and see some art this year.

It’s been an unkind year in some ways.

It is a relief to forget about the apocalypse for an hour or two.

I’ve got a five visual poems from the ‘Classic Crimes’ series in the new Seneca Review. These were accepted last year and it’s great to see them out. I got to see them in the issue, my mother having forwarded one I had sent to her house. Generally when a print magazine sends me a … Read moreThe Mustaches of Scoundrels

The first time I heard Villa-Lobos’s Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5 was at a dance performance at Rutgers University in the late 1980s. A woman in a red velvet dress danced & tumbled through a large patch of grass laid out on stage.

Most recently, some of my little box poems were in Bluestem this month. I make these with small pharma, cosmetic, cough drop and light bulb boxes. With these, I like working with the idea of the interior landscape.

 I’ve never been one for New Year’s Eve but we did venture out for a short concert, which allowed us to say we made it to midnight. The concert was on the loud side, and getting off the subway home at the stroke of midnight meant we caught plenty of large and small explosions, sputtering … Read moreRinging Out the Old

My reading had its seasons.