What do you think?
Rate this book
Urban Tumbleweed: Notes from a Tanka Diary
Urban tumbleweed, some people call it,
discarded plastic bag we see in every city
blown down the street with vagrant wind.
—from Urban Tumbleweed
Urban Tumbleweed is the poet Harryette Mullen’s exploration of spaces where the city and the natural world collide. Written out of a daily practice of walking, Mullen’s stanzas adapt the traditional Japanese tanka, a poetic form suited for recording fleeting impressions, describing environmental transitions, and contemplating the human being’s place in the natural world. But, as she writes in her preface, “What is natural about being human? What to make of a city dweller taking a ‘nature walk’ in a public park while listening to a podcast with ear-bud headphones?”
discarded plastic bag we see in every city
blown down the street with vagrant wind.
—from Urban Tumbleweed
Urban Tumbleweed is the poet Harryette Mullen’s exploration of spaces where the city and the natural world collide. Written out of a daily practice of walking, Mullen’s stanzas adapt the traditional Japanese tanka, a poetic form suited for recording fleeting impressions, describing environmental transitions, and contemplating the human being’s place in the natural world. But, as she writes in her preface, “What is natural about being human? What to make of a city dweller taking a ‘nature walk’ in a public park while listening to a podcast with ear-bud headphones?”
138 pages, Paperback
First published November 5, 2013
11 people are currently reading
589 people want to read
About the author
Harryette Mullen
29 books105 followersHarryette Mullen is an American poet, short story writer, and literary scholar. She was born in Florence, Alabama, grew up in Fort Worth, Texas, graduated from the University of Texas at Austin and attended graduate school at the University of California, Santa Cruz. As of 2008, she lives in Los Angeles, California. She wrote poems such as Land of the Discount Price, Home of the Brand Name.
Mullen began to write poetry as a college student in a multicultural community of writers, artists, musicians, and dancers in Austin, Texas. As an emerging poet, Mullen received a literature award from the Black Arts Academy, a Dobie-Paisano writer’s fellowship from the Texas Institute of Letters and University of Texas, and an artist residency from the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico. In Texas, she worked in the Artists in Schools program before enrolling in graduate school in California, where she continued her study of American literature and encountered even more diverse communities of writers and artists.
Mullen was influenced by the social, political, and cultural movements of African Americans, Mexican Americans, and women in the 1960s-70s, including Civil Rights, Black Power, the Black Arts Movement, Movimiento Chicano, and feminism. Her first book, Tree Tall Woman, which showed traces of all of these influences, was published in 1981.
Especially in her later books, Trimmings, S*PeRM**K*T, Muse & Drudge, and Sleeping with the Dictionary, Mullen frequently combines cultural critique with humor and wordplay as her poetry grapples with topics such as globalization, mass culture, consumerism, and the politics of identity. Critics, including Elisabeth Frost and Juliana Spahr, have suggested that Mullen’s poetry audience is an eclectic community of collaborative readers who share individual and collective interpretations of poems that may provoke multiple, divergent, or contradictory meanings, according to each reader’s cultural background.
Mullen has taught at Cornell University, and currently teaches courses in American poetry, African American literature, and creative writing at the University of California, Los Angeles. While living in Ithaca and Rochester, New York, she was a faculty fellow of the Cornell University Society for the Humanities and a Rockefeller fellow at the Susan B. Anthony Institute at University of Rochester. She has received a Gertrude Stein Award for innovative poetry, a Katherine Newman Award for best essay on U.S. ethnic literature, a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Her poetry collection, Sleeping with the Dictionary (2002), was a finalist for a National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, and Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She received a PEN Beyond Margins Award for her Recyclopedia (2006). She is also credited for rediscovering the novel Oreo, published in 1974 by Fran Ross. Mullen won the fourth annual Jackson Poetry Prize from Poets & Writers in 2010.
Mullen began to write poetry as a college student in a multicultural community of writers, artists, musicians, and dancers in Austin, Texas. As an emerging poet, Mullen received a literature award from the Black Arts Academy, a Dobie-Paisano writer’s fellowship from the Texas Institute of Letters and University of Texas, and an artist residency from the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico. In Texas, she worked in the Artists in Schools program before enrolling in graduate school in California, where she continued her study of American literature and encountered even more diverse communities of writers and artists.
Mullen was influenced by the social, political, and cultural movements of African Americans, Mexican Americans, and women in the 1960s-70s, including Civil Rights, Black Power, the Black Arts Movement, Movimiento Chicano, and feminism. Her first book, Tree Tall Woman, which showed traces of all of these influences, was published in 1981.
Especially in her later books, Trimmings, S*PeRM**K*T, Muse & Drudge, and Sleeping with the Dictionary, Mullen frequently combines cultural critique with humor and wordplay as her poetry grapples with topics such as globalization, mass culture, consumerism, and the politics of identity. Critics, including Elisabeth Frost and Juliana Spahr, have suggested that Mullen’s poetry audience is an eclectic community of collaborative readers who share individual and collective interpretations of poems that may provoke multiple, divergent, or contradictory meanings, according to each reader’s cultural background.
Mullen has taught at Cornell University, and currently teaches courses in American poetry, African American literature, and creative writing at the University of California, Los Angeles. While living in Ithaca and Rochester, New York, she was a faculty fellow of the Cornell University Society for the Humanities and a Rockefeller fellow at the Susan B. Anthony Institute at University of Rochester. She has received a Gertrude Stein Award for innovative poetry, a Katherine Newman Award for best essay on U.S. ethnic literature, a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Her poetry collection, Sleeping with the Dictionary (2002), was a finalist for a National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, and Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She received a PEN Beyond Margins Award for her Recyclopedia (2006). She is also credited for rediscovering the novel Oreo, published in 1974 by Fran Ross. Mullen won the fourth annual Jackson Poetry Prize from Poets & Writers in 2010.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 63 reviews
November 28, 2015
Urban tumbleweed, some people call it,
discarded plastic bag we see in every city
blown down the street with vagrant wind.
—from Urban Tumbleweed by Harryette Mullen.
Harryette Mullen is a favorite poet of mine. I loved her Sleeping with the Dictionary and S*Perm**K*T. So I was confused when I began Urban Tumbleweed: Notes from a Tanka Diary by its seemingly prosaic tone. But every work of Mullen's demands to be read on its own terms. As the lines above demonstrate, Urban Tumbleweed: Notes from a Tanka Diary is the story of an urban California woman encountering nature where it runs meets the city.
I didn't begin to really tap the richness of the book until I began reading it aloud. Then the book really came to life, full of internal rhymes, assonances, alliterations, and a rhythm all its own that didn't live as powerfully when read silently. Borrowing the Asian form of the Tanks, while altering its line structure slightly, the poem examines the little ways in which even the urban is touched (and sometimes transformed) by nature-flowers, storms, even ants scrounging for a piece of pepperoni. Nothing is beneath Mullen's contemplation.
Like me, Mullen has only a city woman's familiarity with nature but paying attention to it's presences, large and small, sharpens her perception, and, in turn, has sharpened my own. The world opens up for her as she incorporates her poetry writing practice into her daily walks. I tried to use the stanzas of her poem by quoting and analyzing them for this review but I found the closer I looked, the more they opened up until their depth and their wideness were too large to contain in this review.
The best way to touch the beauty of this poem is too read it. Closely, and, preferably, aloud.
discarded plastic bag we see in every city
blown down the street with vagrant wind.
—from Urban Tumbleweed by Harryette Mullen.
Harryette Mullen is a favorite poet of mine. I loved her Sleeping with the Dictionary and S*Perm**K*T. So I was confused when I began Urban Tumbleweed: Notes from a Tanka Diary by its seemingly prosaic tone. But every work of Mullen's demands to be read on its own terms. As the lines above demonstrate, Urban Tumbleweed: Notes from a Tanka Diary is the story of an urban California woman encountering nature where it runs meets the city.
I didn't begin to really tap the richness of the book until I began reading it aloud. Then the book really came to life, full of internal rhymes, assonances, alliterations, and a rhythm all its own that didn't live as powerfully when read silently. Borrowing the Asian form of the Tanks, while altering its line structure slightly, the poem examines the little ways in which even the urban is touched (and sometimes transformed) by nature-flowers, storms, even ants scrounging for a piece of pepperoni. Nothing is beneath Mullen's contemplation.
Like me, Mullen has only a city woman's familiarity with nature but paying attention to it's presences, large and small, sharpens her perception, and, in turn, has sharpened my own. The world opens up for her as she incorporates her poetry writing practice into her daily walks. I tried to use the stanzas of her poem by quoting and analyzing them for this review but I found the closer I looked, the more they opened up until their depth and their wideness were too large to contain in this review.
The best way to touch the beauty of this poem is too read it. Closely, and, preferably, aloud.
July 20, 2020
from page 51:
"Very late in the spring, after every living
bush and shrub had bloomed, you finally found
the strength to display a few green leaves."
from page 21:
"Don’t need picket fences, brick wall,
or razor wire. Our home’s protected by
prickly pear cactus and thorny bougainvillea."
from page 20:
"If I could hold this bowl of blue to cracked
lips, if to quench this desert thirst
I could swallow the sky, would I choke on carbon clouds?"
from page 76:
"Envisioning a snow-capped mountain top
where glacier had melted, this determined painter
climbed up to the peak and sprayed it white."
"Very late in the spring, after every living
bush and shrub had bloomed, you finally found
the strength to display a few green leaves."
from page 21:
"Don’t need picket fences, brick wall,
or razor wire. Our home’s protected by
prickly pear cactus and thorny bougainvillea."
from page 20:
"If I could hold this bowl of blue to cracked
lips, if to quench this desert thirst
I could swallow the sky, would I choke on carbon clouds?"
from page 76:
"Envisioning a snow-capped mountain top
where glacier had melted, this determined painter
climbed up to the peak and sprayed it white."
November 30, 2015
Mullen's process in "Urban Tumbleweed" makes me want to commit to trying it myself-- marrying in-the-moment experiences and some of the traditional elements of the Japanese Tanka (poem of 31 syllables) by taking walks with a notebook.
Some major themes--Man v. Nature; the man made v. the natural; man made boundaries make nature a trespasser; the idea of property; man's use or misuse of nature as decoration or entertainment... Mullen draws attention to some environmental issues and man's role in those issues.
Mullen also portrays human on human cruelty, and how the bad treatment of humans mirrors our bad treatment of animals, because both are seen as less than human and therefore unfeeling or undeserving of compassion.
Great writing with lasting effects, Mullen's poetry reminds us to ponder the importance of conservation, compassion, and environmental responsibility.
What surprised me was Mullen's success with moments of (sometimes dark) humor!
Includes a collage style of global events and catastrophes, the poet's own travels to destinations in and out of the US, nature facts, and observations.
"Even in this landscaped paradise / people buy fresh-cut flowers, considered / more aesthetic than the ones growing in the yard." (Pg.6)
"Would have said this purple clustered flower / looks like a burst of fireworks, but of course it's / the fireworks that imitate the flower." (30)
"A flurry begins with a solitary snowflake/ drifting down reluctantly, / as if afraid to fall alone to earth." (40)
"As you have forgotten, so one day/ might you remember how to be wild/ and bewildered, to be wilder than wilderness?" (109)
"Caught a quick glimpse of bright eyes, / yellow feathers, dark wings. Never learned your name--/ and to you, bird, I also remain anonymous." (122)
Some major themes--Man v. Nature; the man made v. the natural; man made boundaries make nature a trespasser; the idea of property; man's use or misuse of nature as decoration or entertainment... Mullen draws attention to some environmental issues and man's role in those issues.
Mullen also portrays human on human cruelty, and how the bad treatment of humans mirrors our bad treatment of animals, because both are seen as less than human and therefore unfeeling or undeserving of compassion.
Great writing with lasting effects, Mullen's poetry reminds us to ponder the importance of conservation, compassion, and environmental responsibility.
What surprised me was Mullen's success with moments of (sometimes dark) humor!
Includes a collage style of global events and catastrophes, the poet's own travels to destinations in and out of the US, nature facts, and observations.
"Even in this landscaped paradise / people buy fresh-cut flowers, considered / more aesthetic than the ones growing in the yard." (Pg.6)
"Would have said this purple clustered flower / looks like a burst of fireworks, but of course it's / the fireworks that imitate the flower." (30)
"A flurry begins with a solitary snowflake/ drifting down reluctantly, / as if afraid to fall alone to earth." (40)
"As you have forgotten, so one day/ might you remember how to be wild/ and bewildered, to be wilder than wilderness?" (109)
"Caught a quick glimpse of bright eyes, / yellow feathers, dark wings. Never learned your name--/ and to you, bird, I also remain anonymous." (122)
November 13, 2025
out of 366 bootleg haikus, i liked maybe 12 of them. this reads like spoken word. it takes itself way too seriously with the dramatic spacing between each tanka. at best, these poems are painless and inconsequential; at worst, they’re nonsensical or trite. it’s sooo hard to write good nature poetry in this day and age. unless you have a really clear sense of the project you’re undertaking (i.e. “the wild iris”), it’s best to just leave it alone. i liked it a little better when she started interrupting the borderline pastoral vibes with the realities of the city and its politics, but even the execution of that was really corny. and after all this, i still don’t feel like i have a better understanding of LA’s soul. in many ways this reads as a tourist’s perspective (kind of the point, i know, but terrible execution). this lady is like if rupi kaur touched grass but was still ultimately rupi kaur.
January 27, 2014
stunningly beautiful: "As you have forgotten, so one day you might remember how to be wild and bewildered, to be wilder and be wilderness?
September 22, 2023
Me and my poetry choices, we are not getting on the same page this year. Given, my selection process is pretty random and I didn't know much about it before getting into this one. Turns out it's a year long account, one poem a day, from Mullen taking walks around her home in LA and a few other places. Which I found intriguing. They are written in Tanka which is a Japanese poetry form, similar to the famous Haiku it's about strict rules for your syllables and your stanzas. I for one loved being introduced to this format, I mean come on Haiku, stop taking all the spotlight! But the execution, it didn't click for me. I kept on reading because I had this feeling that maybe I would get into a flow, these seemed like they would work better read in a continuous rhythm without too many interruptions. Still, I left very indifferent.
I guess I just couldn't fall for Mullen's style. Most of these read like "I went outside and saw a thing". Occasionally, or should I say rarely, she comes up with an interesting phrasing or a clever observation, but most of this washed over me without leaving much of an impression. Obvi, this will be a personal thing, I easily could picture someone else reading this and loving it. For me though, it left me apathetic. I did like how the 6 poems on a double page often were linked by a theme but looking back I couldn't recall a moment or an image that stood out.
Short review for a book that I likely should have dnf'd.
I guess I just couldn't fall for Mullen's style. Most of these read like "I went outside and saw a thing". Occasionally, or should I say rarely, she comes up with an interesting phrasing or a clever observation, but most of this washed over me without leaving much of an impression. Obvi, this will be a personal thing, I easily could picture someone else reading this and loving it. For me though, it left me apathetic. I did like how the 6 poems on a double page often were linked by a theme but looking back I couldn't recall a moment or an image that stood out.
Short review for a book that I likely should have dnf'd.
February 25, 2024
Harryette Mullen, a finalist for the National Book Award and various other accolades, does a fun and specific thing here, gazing on the "urban jungle" (from concrete to bluebells) with a tanka diary. That's based on the Japanese form of verse, with her stanzas numbering 30ish syllables each. There's talk of insects, animals, flowers aplenty, climate change, her fellow walkers, the human condition itself, and things both bucolic and sundry.
There's some ennui and malaise in the mix, and a few banal bits, though I think that was probably part of the point. Mostly these all-but-ephemeral vignettes have a thoroughly bearable lightness about them. I'll read more from this voice of poetry and prose.
Here are three faves:
"Would have said this purple clustered flower
looks like a burst of fireworks, but of course it's
the fireworks that imitate the flower."
(page 30)
"Clicking through images downloaded
from your camera. Those buskers haven't finished
playing, and already they're in your archive."
(page 50)
"Clinics displaying the five-leaf marijuana plant,
weeds sprouting up more numerous than
coffee shops with the mermaid logo."
(page 66)
There's some ennui and malaise in the mix, and a few banal bits, though I think that was probably part of the point. Mostly these all-but-ephemeral vignettes have a thoroughly bearable lightness about them. I'll read more from this voice of poetry and prose.
Here are three faves:
"Would have said this purple clustered flower
looks like a burst of fireworks, but of course it's
the fireworks that imitate the flower."
(page 30)
"Clicking through images downloaded
from your camera. Those buskers haven't finished
playing, and already they're in your archive."
(page 50)
"Clinics displaying the five-leaf marijuana plant,
weeds sprouting up more numerous than
coffee shops with the mermaid logo."
(page 66)
March 17, 2024
A brilliant, fascinating collection of tanka, most of them inspired by Mullen's neighborhood walks in Santa Monica, but also set in Texas, Florida, and on mountain hikes. Mullen takes the tanka form, gives it three lines instead of five, limits each to 31 syllables, and creates astonishingly vivid, compressed, and expressive poems. One of the most interesting books I've read this year, due to the way Mullen turns her walks into naturalist-anthropological-philosophical ruminations. The 21st century has been aptly described here. I am grateful that she also finds moments of beauty in a land of wind-pushed plastic grocery bags, the urban tumbleweeds of the title.
April 11, 2023
Beautiful and poignant poetry. I am new to the Tanka form and am aware that Mullen has made her own variation of the Tanka here. I think she did a great job of fashioning specific imagery and tone in such a small amount of words.
Appreciated her subtle encouragements to deepen our connection to the natural world.
Appreciated her subtle encouragements to deepen our connection to the natural world.
April 9, 2025
Another book I read for class, but I really enjoyed this one!! I can’t help but find the Crows everywhere so I particularly loved “The heart of a saint, stolen from a church in Dublin. Thieves leave golden chalices, costly art, choosing this most priceless relic”
Read
July 31, 2025“As you have forgotten, so one day / might you remember how to be wild / and bewildered, to be wider and be wilderness?”
September 12, 2025
read for thesis, absolutely exceptional kaleidoscope of nature emerging from and in concourse with the metropolis. not going to use for the thesis i don’t think but goddamn.
also had the pleasure of listening to her at AWP last year and she’s an absolute treasure.
also had the pleasure of listening to her at AWP last year and she’s an absolute treasure.
September 10, 2016
Tanka is a new-to-me poetic form, though the poems here are a modified version -- three lines rather than five, with varying distribution of syllables. Topics range from a squirrel seeking solace in the shade to reactions to world news, but the poems are local, focused; each is some kind of observation about the world around the author.
Insofar as I am qualified to talk about poetry, I'll say this: every word counts. In this form (and others like it), every syllable counts. Sometimes the author succeeds brilliantly, offering up, in thirty-one syllables, and entire story or just the briefest of snapshots; in other places the words seem forced into unnatural shapes to make them fit. (Fortunately the latter is the exception rather than the rule; also, I read an ARC, so it is possible that the final version might differ somewhat.)
The poems I cared for least tended to be those with moderately clunky construction or hints of pretension; my favourites included the following:
Thin airmail envelope with indecipherable
handwriting; I tear it open open
to release an inky blue butterfly.
(page 82)
Three and a half stars, if that were possible on GR.
I received a free copy of this book via a Goodreads giveaway.
Insofar as I am qualified to talk about poetry, I'll say this: every word counts. In this form (and others like it), every syllable counts. Sometimes the author succeeds brilliantly, offering up, in thirty-one syllables, and entire story or just the briefest of snapshots; in other places the words seem forced into unnatural shapes to make them fit. (Fortunately the latter is the exception rather than the rule; also, I read an ARC, so it is possible that the final version might differ somewhat.)
The poems I cared for least tended to be those with moderately clunky construction or hints of pretension; my favourites included the following:
Thin airmail envelope with indecipherable
handwriting; I tear it open open
to release an inky blue butterfly.
(page 82)
Three and a half stars, if that were possible on GR.
I received a free copy of this book via a Goodreads giveaway.
March 17, 2014
This collection of stanzas is quite inspiring. It is interesting to read her perspective about a common thing that turns out to be something so profound. I felt recharged, as an artist, that creativity is still found everywhere, even in the most modest, meager, and common daily thing or activity that we don't stop to acknowledge.
November 4, 2019
I had to read this for a class on walking and as recommended by my teacher, it truly is best I’d read all at once. She builds on many tensions throughout this book, like natural vs. unnatural and the contradictions we face in our daily lives, in nature, and up against the government. A fairly quick read with some very impactful stanzas.
Read
November 3, 2020"The morning news and the morning dews." NATURE... but not in the way you might think. A spiritual tour de force... but not in the way you might think!
July 29, 2021
This was a good choice for my read-a-poem-every-morning-and-night routine, because Harryette Mullen wrote Urban Tumbleweed in a similar fashion, except I believe she did a poem every day which took a year and I read 2 pages every day which took about a month. But this was meditative in the sense of you're supposed to let thoughts come to you without judgement (or so I've heard, I've never meditated). So in that sense, Mullen is truly meditating on the things she depicts every day... from nature to pop culture, true crime to daily life, not judging anything as 'bad' or 'good', but just depicting it as she sees it. This is a worldview that I think I will try to adopt for a change.
There are a lot of nature poems in this collection, which made it a fitting replacement now that I've finished my big Mary Oliver book, but there's also a lot about Los Angeles, a city that I don't know much about. It's an effective portrait of LA culture, and some of the more dystopian parts about celebrity culture or technology reminded me of books like "Something New Under The Sun" by Alexandra Kleeman. It's not that Mullen exaggerates things in this book, but when you put a microscope on something like "Octomom" or Venice Beach, the grotesque is put front-and-center. But maybe this is my bias creeping in, and she's merely depicting Californian culture as part of its environment, something that the title "Urban Tumbleweed" encapsulates.
There are a lot of nature poems in this collection, which made it a fitting replacement now that I've finished my big Mary Oliver book, but there's also a lot about Los Angeles, a city that I don't know much about. It's an effective portrait of LA culture, and some of the more dystopian parts about celebrity culture or technology reminded me of books like "Something New Under The Sun" by Alexandra Kleeman. It's not that Mullen exaggerates things in this book, but when you put a microscope on something like "Octomom" or Venice Beach, the grotesque is put front-and-center. But maybe this is my bias creeping in, and she's merely depicting Californian culture as part of its environment, something that the title "Urban Tumbleweed" encapsulates.
November 27, 2025
** 4 stars **
Mullen takes up the Japanese verse form of tanka in this volume. Tanka is a form like haiku, in that it consists of a certain number of syllables (typically 5-7-5-7-7). Mullen adapts this as three-line poems that mostly adhere to the 31-syllable limit. In Urban Tumbleweed, she writes about nature and humanity, grappling with the question (per her intro and acknowledgements) "What is natural about being human?"
Here are some of my favorites of her tanka:
Instead of scanning newspaper headlines,
I spend the morning reading names
of flowers and trees in the botanical garden.
Today I give thanks for grace and mercy
bestowed upon me as I go on living
like a turkey the president pardoned.
I've packed my text. They've checked the mics.
My words unfold and now behind my back
my earthly language has become an alien tongue.
As you have forgotten, so one day
might you remember how to be wild
and bewildered, to be wilder and be wilderness?
If you enjoyed the tanka above, then I think you would probably like the volume as a whole. It's a quick read, and I liked that some of the tanka were in conversation with one another.
Mullen takes up the Japanese verse form of tanka in this volume. Tanka is a form like haiku, in that it consists of a certain number of syllables (typically 5-7-5-7-7). Mullen adapts this as three-line poems that mostly adhere to the 31-syllable limit. In Urban Tumbleweed, she writes about nature and humanity, grappling with the question (per her intro and acknowledgements) "What is natural about being human?"
Here are some of my favorites of her tanka:
Instead of scanning newspaper headlines,
I spend the morning reading names
of flowers and trees in the botanical garden.
Today I give thanks for grace and mercy
bestowed upon me as I go on living
like a turkey the president pardoned.
I've packed my text. They've checked the mics.
My words unfold and now behind my back
my earthly language has become an alien tongue.
As you have forgotten, so one day
might you remember how to be wild
and bewildered, to be wilder and be wilderness?
If you enjoyed the tanka above, then I think you would probably like the volume as a whole. It's a quick read, and I liked that some of the tanka were in conversation with one another.
April 17, 2022
I loved the idea of taking in the everyday with a tanka diary. A long continuous experience is sifted by a constant poetic form. Mullen says she was looking for a way to incorporate a daily practice of walking and writing into her life, and this was in a way a palette cleanser or mindfully refreshing activity from the routine indoor life she was living. I read a few pages a day, allowing poetic snapshots to simmer with me for a while. The majority of the subject matter is LA-based. We gaze as a reader through these windows into the climate, foods and culture there. I have two favourites from the collection, one with a joyful social buzz and one with a quieter reflection:
Ferny leaf with fragrant, pink, silky fluff shades
their café patio table. Their words
mix together like citrus and champagne.
Our best beach days are steely-gray, cloudy
and cool. We wear our thickest sweaters and listen
to the salty crunch of boots on sand.
Ferny leaf with fragrant, pink, silky fluff shades
their café patio table. Their words
mix together like citrus and champagne.
Our best beach days are steely-gray, cloudy
and cool. We wear our thickest sweaters and listen
to the salty crunch of boots on sand.
March 31, 2022
Some of the stanzas in here were incredibly striking in such little space and the structure as a whole felt like that paper bag in the wind type feel. Like these little fleeting moments of beauty or something that was ugly and urban but beautiful in the way it bent towards being something natural. However, I prefer poetry with stronger speakers and a voice that is more emotional and present throughout the work. I often found myself just simply not being engaged by the beauty of the tankas as the collection went on because so many of them lacked a clear speaker.
October 4, 2020
In this collection, Harryette Mullen reflects on her observations made during her many walks throughout Los Angeles. Many of the tanka poems in this book as simplistically beautiful reflections on everyday things that anyone might pass on their walks, but interwoven throughout are poems that reflect on humankind’s place in nature and the impact we have. This was a light read, but is still very thought provoking.
July 11, 2020
I'm a big Mullen fan and it was cool to see her take on the tanka and that blur line between natural and human (if there is a line at all). This text inspired me to keep a tanka diary of my own. It also allowed me to really linger in lines constructed for their descriptive merit within limited syllables, and enjoying those spots of enjambment or wit that emerge in these brief moments.
February 6, 2023
I truly adore this book, and can confidently say it takes the spot as my favorite collection of poems I have read to date. Mullen writes with confidence and tells short, 31 syllable stories of love, belonging, exploration, and imagination. A really beautiful telling of what it is like to be a human in a simultaneously urban and nature-filled world.
February 6, 2024
Nice project—making art of the quotidian and the quotidian from art. Mullen uses a modified tanka form—3 line poems v. the traditional 5 line form. Lots of great moments, some seem pedestrian. Worthwhile read. (2013)
“A man disguised as a baggy cow
steals twenty-six gallons of milk from Walmart,
then gives it all to strangers outside the store. “
— Harryette Mullen / Urban Tumbleweed
“A man disguised as a baggy cow
steals twenty-six gallons of milk from Walmart,
then gives it all to strangers outside the store. “
— Harryette Mullen / Urban Tumbleweed
December 14, 2021
As an LA native and a person who recently started taking daily morning walks without my phone (albeit, in Ridgewood, Queens now) this collection really spoke to me! So much power in mindful noticing, in remarking on the “unremarkable.”
January 5, 2022
Oh. I loved falling into this. The accretion of this collection.
Urban. Pastoral. Desert. Sweden. Dinosaurs. Mammoths. Butterflies. Tabloid headlines.
This felt so wonderfully rooted and delightful and I appreciated its project.
But then again, I love a good project.
Urban. Pastoral. Desert. Sweden. Dinosaurs. Mammoths. Butterflies. Tabloid headlines.
This felt so wonderfully rooted and delightful and I appreciated its project.
But then again, I love a good project.
January 1, 2023
Tankas are a quick new favorite of mine in the poetry world and Harryette has such a unique take on them. She has quite impactful and quite low-ball observations about the urban cityscape and how it's our own manicured naturescape in a world becoming more and more cramped.
Read
June 5, 2023Focuses more on the collison of the natural world with the physical manmade which was interesting to see in tanka poetry. I have a few favorites in the book but not great throughout which was a bit sad.
July 8, 2025
366 tanka poems (31 syllable poems)
——
I go for weeks without eating meat,
but sniffing the smoky aroma of barbecued ribs,
I revert back to carnivore
——
Urban tumbleweed, some people call it,
discarded plastic bag we see in every city
blown down the street with vagrant wind.
——
I go for weeks without eating meat,
but sniffing the smoky aroma of barbecued ribs,
I revert back to carnivore
——
Urban tumbleweed, some people call it,
discarded plastic bag we see in every city
blown down the street with vagrant wind.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 63 reviews