Sleeping with the Dictionary (New California Poetry)
It's been over six years since Mullen published her last book,  Muse & Drudge, a series of terse, wacky quatrains which  barnstormed through plangent blues to "rhime rich" rap, from  Language poetry-style minimalism to "the doubles" of the  playground dis. Mullen's fifth book is no less unconventional,  and more diverse prose poems, exhaustive alphabetical  language-salads like "Jinglejangle" ("Mingus Among Us mishmash  Missy-Pissy mock croc Mod Squad mojo moldy oldie"), surrealistic  odes to her erotic other, Oulipian word-replacement poems, short  stories that recall the quasi-fantastic realism of John Yau and  strange rewrites of classics, such as this riff on Shakespeare's  famous sonnet: "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. If her  mop were Slinkys, dishwater Slinkys would grow on her noggin."  Some poems expose, mischievously, the basic foibles of human  sexual relations. Others, like "Present Tense" and "We Are Not  Responsible," hone political realities through histrionic  absurdity: "Now that the history of civilization has been  encrypted on a grain of rice, it's taken the starch out of the  stuffed shorts." All of the work here is full of such energy,  invention and pleasure that the dictionary surely awoke  refreshed. (Feb.) Forecast: Mullen's Freeing the Soul: Race, Subjectivity and  Difference in Slave Narratives was published in 1999 by  Cambridge University Press, and she is currently teaching  creative writing and African American literature at UCLA. Poems  from her long unavailable 1981 debut, Tall Tree Women, along  with other early works, are due to be reissued by Bucknell  University Press in April. Her three small press books from the  '90s (Trimmings, S*Perm*K*T and Muse & Drudge) remain in print  and oft assigned, but this volume's visibility and accessibility  should make it a breakthrough. Look for some prize nominations,  and a possible "new & selected" next time around.Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.