"licked all over by the English tongue"

For the longest time I’ve been trying to figure out just how to review this book. I figure now is just as good a time as any.

During my heydays in college, I took a creative writing course focused on poetry. I’m not sure why my professor chose this book, but he did. A National Book Award finalist, Harryette Mullen’s Sleeping with the Dictionary.

This 85 page book of poems was, according to Mullen, inspired and created with the help of Roget’s Thesaurus and The American Heritage Dictionary, alongside the influences of Langston Hughes, Arna Bontemps, and Gloria Steinem. Mullen uses a lot of word play to create and showcase her poetry, such as the acrostic, anagram, homophone, parody, and pun.

Though I am not familiar with the following games, the inside of the cover asserts that several of Mullen’s poems were “inspired or influenced by the dictionary game called s+7 or n+7, a technique of the international literary avant-garde group Oulipo.” It is by using this method she reinvents past poems by Shakespeare or the typical fairytale into something more nonsensical. Yes, they’re there, but you’d never know it unless you paid attention. In fact, I hadn’t even noticed this until during one class we took a closer look at “Variation on a Theme Park.” The first reading garnered nothing from most of us. It made no sense and I found myself slightly annoyed, thinking “All she did was throw a bunch of words together.” Finally it was pointed out that she had taken Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130, and wholly reworked it.

The poems themselves are arranged alphabetically by title, starting with “All She Wrote” and ending with “Zombie Hat.” The trick is that you can’t just read these poems and take them at face value. They are not meant for that. They are meant to be looked at with a much deeper desire, for the reader to prod between the words and under them. What was this poem before becoming this version? It basically tugs at you, asking for your thoughts on poetic discourse concerning Mullen’s work and the text it evolved from.

Now normally I would have sold off this book a long time ago. I’m a simple creature, and despite what some might think of us English majors (or in my case, graduates), we don’t sit around all day pondering poetic discourse. Instead I kept this book around for a major reason – “Jinglejangle.” The poem covers about 10 pages (don’t worry, the book is small, remember?) and utterly demands to be read aloud. Though difficult to explain, it is overflowing with alliteration, rhyme and partial rhyme, onomatopoeia among other techniques, using pop culture references, popular sayings, old sayings, and getting them to fit together like strange puzzle pieces by sound and spelling. All alphabetical of course.

I also enjoy “Kamasutra Sutra” and “Blah-Blah.” Hehe.

While not quite for the casual reader, Sleeping with the Dictionary is more enjoyable by those willing to take the time to read through it carefully and ponder Mullen’s methodology and the links between her work and its origins. Though I do not pull this book out to read every day, it does make for an interesting addition on my bookshelf, and I really can appreciate the work Mullen put in to create some of these poems. Choose to read at your own poetic and discursive discretion.

NT