On Wednesday night, Russell House attendees were treated to a poetry reading by Harryette Mullen that tantalized both the ears and the intellect. Mullen is visiting from Los Angeles, where she teaches African American Studies and Creative Writing at UCLA. Her work, including the collections “S*PeRM**KT” (1992) amd “Muse and Drudge” (1995) have been much praised and anthologized, and she was nominated for a National Book Award for her most recent book, “Sleeping with the Dictionary” (2002).
Mullen read from several of her books, choosing from a broad spectrum of poems that reflect her style in its various incarnations. Some of her earlier work was influenced by Gertrude Stein and by the Language poets, a loosely associated school of writers who wanted to deconstruct the dominant idea of poetic voice. Her recent poetry takes a cue from the Oulipo poets, a contemporary group centered in France, who create “potential literature” with techniques like S+7, in which each noun from a found text is replaced with the noun seven words away in the dictionary. The poems in “Sleeping with the Dictionary” are arranged in alphabetical order and many of them concern our relationship with language, which, as the title implies, sometimes borders on the erotic.
During the question and answer period, a member of the audience commented to Mullen that she seems to find poetry in everything.
“Yes!” Mullen said enthusiastically, and she went on to explain one of her reasons for writing poetry.
“It’s an act of resistance, an act of self-defense,” she said, in reference to her practice of “recycling” the clichés of advertising slogans and political rhetoric. “Rather than walk through this landscape of language as a zombie I want to convert it.”
Another question concerned Mullen’s use of Spanish in some of her poems.
“Spanish in my poetry represents a vision of diversity,” she said. “It’s also an echo of my childhood [in Texas]. We are all bilingual in some respects. Culturally and linguistically, we’re divided.”
The audience responded positively to the reading.
“I thought it was good,” said Mike Donnella ’07. “I liked the way she played with words and her ideas.”
“People seemed very receptive,” said Elizabeth Willis, Assistant Professor of English. “Her work seems to inspire a freedom in the audience to respond in the moment. Actually it’s very similar to the way the reader is positioned within her text as a collaborator in the process of making meaning.”
Willis, who coordinated Mullen’s visit, sees her as an especially significant writer for bridging a gap between two major categories of American poets today.
“She’s a very innovative writer who’s also interested in being read and understood by a wide readership, so she resolves the problems of being either just a populist poet or just an avant-garde writer,” Willis said. “I really think of her as an American writer. I was interested in bringing in writers who were specifically addressing what it is to be an American in this period and whose work includes a critique of certain aspects of American culture at the same time that it celebrates the virtues of American culture—free speech, etc.—with that Whitmanic love of the democratic voice, the democratic potential for poetry.”
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