Harryette Mullen's fifth poetry collection, Sleeping with the Dictionary, is the abecedarian offspring of her collaboration with two of the poet's most seductive writing partners, Roget's Thesaurus and The American Heritage Dictionary. In her ménage à trois with these faithful companions, the poet is aware that while Roget seems obsessed with categories and hierarchies, the American Heritage, whatever its faults, was compiled with the assistance of a democratic usage panel that included black poets Langston Hughes and Arna Bontemps, as well as feminist author and editor Gloria Steinem. With its arbitrary yet determinant alphabetical arrangement, its gleeful pursuit of the ludic pleasure of word games (acrostic, anagram, homophone, parody, pun), as well as its reflections on the politics of language and dialect, Mullen's work is serious play. A number of the poems are inspired or influenced by a technique of the international literary avant-garde group Oulipo, a dictionary game called S+7 or N+7. This method of textual transformationwhich is used to compose nonsensical travesties reminiscent of Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky"also creates a kind of automatic poetic discourse.Mullen's parodies reconceive the African American's relation to the English language and Anglophone writing, through textual reproduction, recombining the genetic structure of texts from the Shakespearean sonnet and the fairy tale to airline safety instructions and unsolicited mail. The poet admits to being "licked all over by the English tongue," and the title of this book may remind readers that an intimate partner who also gives language lessons is called, euphemistically, a "pillow dictionary."
Harryette Mullen is Associate Professor of English and African American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the author of Tree Tall Woman (1981), Trimmings (1991), S*PeRM**K*T (1992), and Muse & Drudge (1995).
Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
All She Wrote
Forgive me, I'm no good at this. I can't write back. I never read your letter. I can't say I got your note. I haven't had the strength to open the envelope. The mail stacks up by the door. Your hand's illegible. Your postcards were defaced. "Wash your wet hair"? Any document you meant to send has yet to reach me. The untied parcel service never delivered. I regret to say I'm unable to reply to your unexpressed desires. I didn't get the book you sent. By the way, my computer was stolen. Now I'm unable to process words. I suffer from aphasia. I've just returned from Kenya and Korea. Didn't you get a card from me yet? What can I tell you? I forgot what I was going to say. I still can't find a pen that works and then I broke my pencil. You know how scarce paper is these days. I admit I haven't been recycling. I never have time to read the Times. I'm out of shopping bags to put the old news in. I didn't get to the market. I meant to clip the coupons. I haven't read the mail yet. I can't get out the door to work, so I called in sick. I went to bed with writer's cramp. If I couldn't get back to writing, I thought I'd catch up on my reading. Then Oprah came on with a fabulous author plugging her best-selling book.
The Anthropic Principle
The pope of cosmology addresses a convention. When he talks the whole atmosphere changes. He speaks through a computer. When he asks can you hear me, the whole audience says yes. It's a science locked up in a philosophical debate. There are a few different theories. There could be many different realities. You might sayours exists because we do. You could take a few pounds of matter, heat it to an ungodly temperature, or the universe was a freak accident. There may be a limit to our arrogance, but one day the laws of physics will read like a detailed instruction manual. A plane that took off from its hub in my hometown just crashed in the President's hometown. The news anchor says the pilot is among the dead. I was hoping for news of the President's foreign affair with a diplomat's wife. I felt a mystical connection to the number of confirmed dead whose names were not released. Like the time I was three handshakes from the President. Like when I thought I heard that humanitarians dropped a smart blond on the Chinese embassy. Like when the cable was severed and chairs fell from the sky because the pilot flew with rusty maps. What sane pilot would land in that severe rain with hard hail and gale-force wind. With no signal of distress. With no foghorns to warn the civilians, the pilot lost our moral compass in the bloody quagmire of collateral damage. One theory says it's just a freak accident locked up in a philosophical debate. It's like playing poker and all the cards are wild. Like the arcane analysis of a black box full of insinuations of error.
Any Lit
You are a ukulele beyond my microphone You are a Yukon beyond my Micronesia You are a union beyond my meiosis You are a unicycle beyond my migration You are a universe beyond my mitochondria You are a Eucharist beyond my Miles Davis You are a euphony beyond my myocardiogram You are a unicorn beyond my Minotaur You are a eureka beyond my maitai You are a Yuletide beyond my minesweeper You are a euphemism beyond my myna bird You are a unit beyond my mileage You are a Yugoslavia beyond my mind's eye You are a yoo-hoo beyond my minor key You are a Euripides beyond my mime troupe You are a Utah beyond my microcosm You are a Uranus beyond my Miami You are a youth beyond my mylar You are a euphoria beyond my myalgia You are a Ukrainian beyond my Maimonides You are a Euclid beyond my miter box You are a Univac beyond my minus sign You are a Eurydice beyond my maestro You are a eugenics beyond my Mayan You are a U-boat beyond my mind control You are a euthanasia beyond my miasma You are a urethra beyond my Mysore You are a Euterpe beyond my Mighty Sparrow You are a ubiquity beyond my minority You are a eunuch beyond my migraine You are a Eurodollar beyond my miserliness You are a urinal beyond my Midol You are a uselessness beyond my myopia
Ask Aden
for A.D.
Are aardvarks anxious? Do dragons dream? Ever see an eager elephant? Newts are never nervous, are they?
AcknowledgmentsAll She WroteThe Anthropic PrincipleAny LitAsk AdenBetweenBilingual InstructionsBlack NikesBlah-BlahBleeding HeartsBolsa Algodón Coals to Newcastle, Panama Hats from EcuadorCoo/SlurDaisy PearlDenigrationDim LadyDream CycleEctopiaEllipticalEuropean Folk Tale VariantEurydiceExploring the Dark ContentFancy CortexFree RadicalsThe Gene for MusicHitched to a StarJinglejangleJunk MailKamasutra SutraKirstenographyThe Lunar LutheranMantra for a Classless Society, or Mr. Roget’s Neighborhood Music for Homemade InstrumentsNaked Statues000Natural AnguishOnce Ever AfterO, ’Tis William Outside ArtPresent TenseQuality of LifeResistance Is FertileShe Swam On from Sea to ShineSleeping with the DictionarySouvenir from AnywhereSuzuki MethodSwift TommyTed Joans at the Café BizarreTransientsVariation on a Theme ParkWay OppositeWe Are Not ResponsibleWhy You and IWino RhinoWipe That Simile Off Your AphasiaXenophobic Nightmare in a Foreign LanguageX-ray VisionZen AcornZombie Hat