Sleeping with the Dictionary by Harryette Mullen
"Sleeping with the Dictionary" is a unique poetry collection by Harryette Mullen, featuring fifty-seven poems organized alphabetically from A to Z. The work creatively blends diverse genres and styles—drawing from literary predecessors like Shakespeare and the Brothers Grimm, contemporary performance art, and even everyday texts such as government communications and product advertisements. The title poem serves as a focal point, inspired by an incident where Mullen found her dictionary in bed, symbolizing the intimate yet tumultuous relationship between language and desire.
Mullen's poetry explores the fluidity of meaning, utilizing playful techniques like rearrangement and parody to subvert traditional forms. Notable poems include humorous takes on Shakespeare's sonnets and modern adaptations of classic fairy tales, offering fresh perspectives on familiar narratives. The collection is critically acclaimed, having been recognized as a finalist for several prestigious literary awards. Mullen's work resonates with the linguistic experimentation reminiscent of poets like Langston Hughes and Gwendolyn Brooks, reflecting her deep engagement with African American poetry and avant-garde influences. She teaches creative writing and women’s literature at UCLA, continuing to inspire new generations of writers.
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Sleeping with the Dictionary by Harryette Mullen
First published: 2002
Type of work: Poetry
The Poems
The titles of the fifty-seven poems in Harryette Mullen’s Sleeping with the Dictionary begin with letters from A to Z, and the poems are arranged alphabetically in the volume. The poems also incorporate various genres of writing, including some categories not typically associated with poetry. Mullen acknowledges her literary predecessors—including William Shakespeare and the Brothers Grimm, whose sonnets and fairy tales she comically and insightfully updates—as well as her contemporaries, the performance artists, rappers, and jazz musicians with whom her verses seemingly riff. She also assimilates portions of government regulatory communications, product solicitations, and instruction manuals into her poetry. In its varied scope, Mullen’s volume exceeds the dictionary of its title: It is exquisitely encyclopedic.
Though the poems in the collection can be read in any order, the title poem is a useful point of departure, as it offers clues to reading the others. “Sleeping with the Dictionary” derives from an incident in Mullen’s life. Awakened from sleep by a sharp object, the poet turned to find her American Heritage Dictionary lodged under the covers. Mullen’s ode to her dictionary is equal parts love poem and lover’s complaint. The speaker in the poem links the enticements of words to the desires of the body; she notes that “to go through all these motions and procedures, groping in the dark for an alluring word, is the poet’s nocturnal mission.” The brain processes words, while the body experiences a restless slumber, and the speaker acknowledges that sleeping with the dictionary might induce nightmares as well as dreams.
The final line of the poem offers a potential map through the linguistic labyrinth that is Sleeping with the Dictionary: “In the rapid eye movement of the poet’s night vision, this dictum can be decoded, like the secret acrostic of a lover’s name.” In the act of composition, Mullen deciphers words from a source that ostensibly performed that service for her. Unlike the denotative and static definitions the dictionary provides, Mullen’s acts of decoding—accomplished through rearrangement, repetition, and replacement of the familiar—render the meanings of words less fixed and more fluid. Mullen’s poems revel in the limitless connotative possibilities of language.
Two of Mullen’s prose poems parody Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130, which begins “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun.” In “Dim Lady,” whose title alludes to Shakespeare’s Dark Lady, Mullen revises the language of the Bard but maintains his intent—to belie false comparisons. Mullen’s lines parallel Shakespeare’s, but they substitute contemporary metaphors for comic effect: “My honeybunch’s peepers are nothing like neon. Today’s special at Red Lobster is redder than her kisser. If Liquid Paper is White, her racks are institutional beige.” The poetic persona concludes the unflattering evaluation by proclaiming the “honeybunch” as worthy of admiration as any over-promoted model. “Variation on a Theme Park” continues the use of metaphorical devaluations, but the specific topic is original to Mullen: The entertainment industry, with Mickey Mouse as its poster child, becomes a symbol for corporate greed and shallow consumerism, leaving the poem’s speaker to reflect upon her “loneliness as reckless as any souvenir bought with free coupons.”
Drawing from well-known fairy tales, “Once Ever After” and “European Folk Tale Variant” update traditional stories for contemporary audiences. Mullen’s poems leave sufficient traces of their source material to allow readers to experience both simultaneously, merging the medieval and the modern. “Once Ever After” includes all the standard plot points of stories involving princesses awaiting their princes, but in Mullen’s version the princess wets the bed down to the very last stacked mattress. In one section, Mullen employs a fill-in-the-blank catalog of expectations regarding the princess and her fate: “Her lips were. Her hair was. Her complexion was.” In this manner, the poet allows readers either to complete the statements in accord with expectations, suggesting universal fatigue with the familiar, or to make radical substitutions, breathing new life into an old story. Composed in the form of a news report, “European Folk Tale Variant” retells the story of Goldilocks. In Mullen’s version, the innocent but curious girl of the original tale becomes a juvenile delinquent charged with breaking and entering.
Critical Context
Two standard repositories of the English language, Roget’s Thesaurus and The American Heritage Dictionary, provided inspiration and source material for Sleeping with the Dictionary, Mullen’s fifth volume of poetry. A critical success, the collection was selected as a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Its popularity spawned new interest in Mullen’s previous books, three of which were reissued in a single volume, Recyclopedia: “Trimmings,” “S*PeRM**K*T,” and “Muse and Drudge” (2006).
Critics liken Harryette Mullen to Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes (1902-1967) and to Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000), both poets revered for their experiments with language. Hughes incorporated elements of jazz, as both subject and structure, in such poems as “The Trumpet Player.” Brooks employed African American vernacular in such poems as “We Real Cool.” Mullen credits her elementary school teachers in Fort Worth, Texas, with introducing her to African American poetry, and she continues the pedagogic and poetic legacy as both a poet and a professor. Mullen teaches creative writing and women’s literature at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Two important influences on Mullen’s poetry derive from her graduate studies at the University of California at Santa Cruz. The work of avant-garde poet Gertrude Stein (1874-1946), known for her experimentation with poetic form, is a model for Mullen’s own creative wordplay. Additionally, Mullen encountered a technique known as “S + 7,” derived from the French Oulipian movement. In this word game, one word is substituted for another in its grammatical class (nouns for nouns, verbs for verbs, adjectives for adjectives, and so forth) by counting seven up or seven down from the original word’s place in the dictionary.
Bibliography
Beal, Emily. “’As Reading as If’: Harryette Mullen’s ’Cognitive Similes.’” Journal of Literary Semantics 34, no. 2 (2005): 125-137. Considers Mullen’s poem “Wipe That Simile off Your Aphasia” (from Sleeping with the Dictionary) in terms of cognitive poetic theory. Argues that Mullen not only destabilizes semantics in this poem but also defamiliarizes the process by which readers interpret poetry.
Bettridge, Joel. Review of Sleeping With the Dictionary and Blues Baby: Early Poems, by Harryette Mullen. Chicago Review 49, no. 2 (Summer, 2003): 160-165. Relates Mullen’s poetic experimentation to her explorations of the politics of race, sex, and culture.
Cummins, Allison. “Public Subjects: Race and the Critical Reception of Gwendolyn Brooks, Erica Hunt, and Harryette Mullen.” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 26, no. 2 (2005): 3-36. Connects Mullen’s polyvocalic verse to rap lyrics and hypertext. Noting the “teachability” of Mullen’s poems, suggests that younger readers are more adept at interpreting Mullen’s work than their professors who assign it.
Frost, Elisabeth. “’Belatedly Beladied Blues’: Hybrid Traditions in the Poetry of Harryette Mullen.” In The Feminist Avant-Garde in American Poetry. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2003. Reveals how Mullen revises the innovative poetics of Gertrude Stein to incorporate a multiplicity of ethnic voices and experiences that were either unknown to or undervalued by her predecessor.
Harvey, Matthea. “DON DADA ON THE DOWN LOW GETTING GODLY IN HIS GAME.” American Poet 30 (Spring, 2006): 10-13. Provides background on abecedarian poetry and examines Mullen’s particular use of the form in Sleeping With the Dictionary.
Sharf, Michael. Review of Sleeping With the Dictionary, by Harryette Mullen. Publishers Weekly 248, no. 51 (December 17, 2001): 85. Lauds Mullen’s diversity of forms, styles, and voices. Praises the vitality and ingenuity of her poems.
Thomas, Lorenzo. Review of Sleeping With the Dictionary, by Harryette Mullen. African American Review 36, no. 4 (Winter, 2002): 697. Comments upon Mullen’s proclivity for Oulipian techniques, humor, and social critique.