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Sleeping with the Dictionary (New California Poetry, 4) |  | Author: Harryette Mullen
Publisher: University of California Press
Category: Book
List Price: $16.95
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Rating:  6 reviews
Media: Paperback
Pages: 85
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.6
ISBN: 0520231430
Dewey Decimal Number: 811.54
EAN: 9780520231436
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Product Description
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 transformation--which 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."
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 6
 I love her! October 7, 2003
ms. coupal (NY, USA)
9 out of 12 found this review helpful
This must be one of my favorite books! Not just of poetry, either. Mullen's use of language is both quirky and genius. Ok, so it's a little much with the long alphabet babble towards the middle...but the book is overwhelmingly filled with insight, revealing language manipulation, and a charming love of language!Plus, she's really nice! (She replied to my email. Very cool.)
Amazing Word Play, Fun For Hours October 7, 2007
Ronald V. Palmer Jr. (San Francisco)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I love this book. I've read it cover to cover like returning to a special place in the woods in your own mind. Mullen brings you there but burns different pathways to the center lit with so much light. Little magmalicious gems tumbling down the vol/cano:e, down the volcano by conoe or something of a brightening.
Sound and Sense aplenty April 13, 2008
J. P. Craig (Knoxville, TN, United States)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Mullen's work rewards attention. It is playful and noisy, or musical, and it also has a great deal to say. However, it says what it says in a Steinian way, so it's best not to expect an essay or content that's always summarizable. The best example, I think, is her "Dim Lady," a transformation of Shakespeare's Sonnet 130 into more modern terms. Other poems work similarly, like "We Are Not Responsible," which in repurposing the language of the baggage disclaimer to "relatives" reveals or sends up, to me anyway, the sort of corporate callousness that leaves people stranded in an airliner on the tarmac for hours at a stretch.
Mullen ain't Frost, nor is she James Tate nor Gertrude Stein. She's Mullen, and there's plenty to her work besides "surface" euphony. If you can't see the seriousness in her play, give her another chance; there's plenty of there there.
Delightful and Deep August 25, 2009
M. Fujii (San Luis Obispo, CA United States)
One of my favorite books of poetry; it has stayed with me through the years since I first read it. Mullen has so much fun playing with language. But she also shares deeper, subtle messages about society and human nature through her playful compositions.
 Wonderful Fun April 12, 2004
Adam Strauss (Louisville, Ky)
8 out of 9 found this review helpful
Until reading this collection, I was no fan of the prosepoem; now, since having spent many delicious times with this volume, I can no-longer say that. Mullen's works in Sleeping With The Dictionary are frequently fabulously playful, often have wonderful aural effects, and can be an hybrid of the laugh-out-loud funny and point-blank seriousness. "K was burn at the bend of the ear in the mouth of remember": K was born at the end of the year in the month of December"--Marvelous!
Showing reviews 1-5 of 6
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