Sleeping with the Dictionary: Volume 4

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.

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.

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!

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.)