Mullen further examines language and questions
subjectivity and audience. In S*PeRMKT Mul-
len employs the lens of the consumer marketing
strategies of major supermarkets, where language
in advertisements and store displays reinscribe
the language of gender differences in American
culture. Puns, parodies, and metaphors abound
in metonymic play in lines such as “Iron maid-
ens make docile martyrs. / Their bodies on the
rack stretched taut.” However, all of Mullen’s po-
etic work—Tall Tree Woman (1981), Trimmings,
SPeRMK*T [Supermarket], Muse and Drudge
(1995), Sleeping with the Dictionary (2002), and
Blues Baby: Early Poems (2002), a collection of
previously uncollected poems and a reprint of
Tall Tree Woman—seem to resonate not only
through these cultural, political, and social ele-
ments but also through important elements of
Mullen’s personal milieu.
According to Mullen, her award-winning col-
lection Sleeping with the Dictionary, literally was
started when she fell asleep with a dictionary in
her bed and was awakened by pain caused by the
dictionary poking her in her back. Several poems
in the collection find Mullen’s intricately “nudg-
ing” her readers, awakening them to language and
its various uses. For example, in “Resistance Is Fer-
tile,” Mullen weaves cultural symbols into stinging
parodies of social moralists, punning on words
and phrases associated with various familiar ex-
pressions and combining them with a play on the
body’s consumption, conversion, and expulsion of
fecal matter. Here, Mullen reminds us of the waste
we daily spew out of our bodies and asks, “Did you
need to read the label on Olean to know that the
SOS goes out when the ship’s going down?”
In “European Folktale Variation” Mullen be-
comes trickster-storyteller, reenvisioning the
classic tale of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Her
central character, a young “platinum blond” lack-
ing in “proper socialization,” perpetrates a “B and
E” and breaks and enters into the house of some
surprisingly humanlike “bruins” (bears) residing
in a cottage outside of town. The humorous play
moves the reader from the rustic European coun-
tryside to suburban Anytown USA, or even to an
American college campus (perhaps to the Univer-
sity of California at Los Angeles—the “bruins”),
where young, restless youths destroy and deface
with disregard for order and rules, glad to be away
from the watchful gaze of their parents. The po-
em’s complexity allows multiple interpretations.
“We Are Not Responsible” responds to the state
of a litigious society, manifested as the overly pre-
tentious world of the airline industry, in which
everything has a disclaimer for liability. The voice
of an airline attendant spews company policy and
regulations, explaining why bags have been lost,
reservations have been canceled, and people of a
certain color, “gang color,” as Mullen aptly calls it,
who fit a racial profile, seem to be prone to search
and seizure. With this reference, Mullen draws di-
rectly from the contemporary political climate of
America—a model that is readily identifiable.
Mullen was a finalist in the 2002 National Book
Award and Book Circle Critics Awards competi-
tions in poetry for Sleeping with the Dictionary,
and recent recognition of Mullen’s poetry reflects
a growing awareness in both the scholarly and
popular worlds of her impressive poetic craft and
art. However, Mullen is also an important schol-
arly voice in the formation and discussion of Af-
rican-American literature. She has published an
impressive collection of critical musings on a va-
riety of topics, including critical studies on gen-
der, race, and subjectivity in the slave narrative
and her introduction to Oreo (2000), Fran Ross’s
poignant book exploring black and Jewish rela-
tions. Mullen’s voice is an important new presence
in African-American literature, not only because
of its self-reflexive attention to earlier traditions
in African-American literature but also because
of the new developments in African-American
literature—fiction and poetry—that her work
represents. In particular, her poetry is a rejoin-
ing of the audiences of the past and a promise to
audiences of the future—illuminating the power
and promise of the word in each poetic work of
art she creates.BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bedient, Calvin. “The Solo Mysterioso Blues: An In-
terview with Harryette Mullen.” Callaloo 19, no. 3
(1996): 651–669.374 Mullen, Harryette Romell