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Recyclopedia: Trimmings / S*PeRM**K*T / Muse and Drudge
Three important poetry collections brought together under one cover by Harryette Mullen, author of Sleeping with the Dictionary
if you turned down the media
so I could write a book
then you could look me up
in your voluminous recyclopedia
-from Muse & Drudge
Recyclopedia shows the extraordinary development of Harryette Mullen's career, in her books Trimmings, S*PeRM**K*T, and Muse & Drudge, all originally published in the 1990s and now available again to new readers. These prose poems and lyrics bring us into collision with the language of fashion and femininity, advertising and the supermarket, the blues and traditional lyric poetry. Recyclopedia is a major gathering of work by one of the most exciting and innovative poets writing in America today.
if you turned down the media
so I could write a book
then you could look me up
in your voluminous recyclopedia
-from Muse & Drudge
Recyclopedia shows the extraordinary development of Harryette Mullen's career, in her books Trimmings, S*PeRM**K*T, and Muse & Drudge, all originally published in the 1990s and now available again to new readers. These prose poems and lyrics bring us into collision with the language of fashion and femininity, advertising and the supermarket, the blues and traditional lyric poetry. Recyclopedia is a major gathering of work by one of the most exciting and innovative poets writing in America today.
178 pages, Paperback
First published October 31, 2006
19 people are currently reading
764 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.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 62 reviews
May 4, 2008
There's NOT ENOUGH praise possible for this remarkable book! The first of the 3 books included I had not read until this collection, and am glad to have it! S*PeRM**K*T and Muse & Drudge have been on my bookshelf, on my table, on the side of my bed on and off for years, always returning the keen sense of song only Mullen has for us. The introductory notes by the author are also very interesting, talking about how/when/where these came to be. This is essential reading!
CAConrad
http://CAConrad.blogspot.com
CAConrad
http://CAConrad.blogspot.com
August 15, 2025
It's been a while since I've been shushed for reading poetry aloud at 4 AM.
November 15, 2024
mullen is cool as hell.
March 17, 2009
I don't want to finish reading this book. I have been with it for months. I have chewed each page a dozen times. Every other word makes me want to cry. Harryette Mullen is beautifully intelligent, ravishingly witty, impeccably naughty. Her poems speak a dozen languages at once. READ THIS! This is the best book of poetry I have read since...I can't think of a better one just now...
June 24, 2019
“Relishes from valises. Scientific briefs. Chemists model molecular shadows structure mimic dancers. Shirt in the line, a flapper’s shimmy shake in a silk chemise. A shift, a woman’s movement, a loose garment of manmade fabric. Polly and Esther living modern with better chemistry.”
May 18, 2012
Trimmings
-quick snatch, pocketbook, box, loose lips, beaver, muff
Much of the word and sound play is easy to follow/pick up on. “boa scarfs her up.” (6)
“At length, skirt’s sweep, her furbelow. Or slit, tight.” (25) “Mohair.” (47)
There are times Mullen leads with the telling card. For me, these were the instances where the prose poem flat-lined at its start. Examples: “Lips, clasped together.” (4), “What’s holding her up. Straps, laces.” (34), “Swan neck, white shoulders, lumps of fat.” (50). The images were too discernable, and the sentences following weren’t generating particularly interesting ideas/images that would justify starting with so dominant an image.
There are a number of instances where the actual and implied image can clearly be understood by most readers, yet Mullen still includes these over the top sentences that jump out as though shouting THIS, THIS RIGHT HERE, THIS IS THE POINT, DO YOU GET IT?
While I did appreciate many of the gestures Mullen makes, on the whole, I did not find Trimmings to be particularly contemporary in its analysis of constructing femininity through clothing. Perhaps that has something to do with the constant references to traditional effeminate colors, pink and white (as a comment on social-authoritative discourses influencing gender, color seems an appropriate topic to explore in an analysis of children and gender). Or perhaps, more likely it has to do with her use of archaic terms for clothing. All of the mentioning of all of the petticoats and the names for all the outdated undergarments began feeling cheap. Mullen explains her want to convey clothing as constructing modern femininity, and then explains she wants to include all the petticoats because she wants to bring traditional associations to the modern perception of the female images. It’s not the explanation I’m finding problematic; it’s how often Mullen mentions the archaic clothing and how heavily she relies on the archaic images when they are mentioned. There is significantly less allusion to modern day clothing of the early nineties when the book was published that there is allusion to the goddamn petticoats.
A highlight:
+“Garters garnish daughters partner what mothers they gather they tether.” (13)
This juxtaposition of a mother and a daughter wearing a garter was clever and possessed a depth in the implication that woman’s relationship to the world, especially to articles of clothing, undergoes a dramatic shift upon entering motherhood. The image of the young wearing garters and becoming decoration for partners is an interesting way to think of the scenario. The second half of the sentence describes garters tethering mothers. What an interesting image, as well as an interesting juxtaposition of the daughter and the mother.
-quick snatch, pocketbook, box, loose lips, beaver, muff
Much of the word and sound play is easy to follow/pick up on. “boa scarfs her up.” (6)
“At length, skirt’s sweep, her furbelow. Or slit, tight.” (25) “Mohair.” (47)
There are times Mullen leads with the telling card. For me, these were the instances where the prose poem flat-lined at its start. Examples: “Lips, clasped together.” (4), “What’s holding her up. Straps, laces.” (34), “Swan neck, white shoulders, lumps of fat.” (50). The images were too discernable, and the sentences following weren’t generating particularly interesting ideas/images that would justify starting with so dominant an image.
There are a number of instances where the actual and implied image can clearly be understood by most readers, yet Mullen still includes these over the top sentences that jump out as though shouting THIS, THIS RIGHT HERE, THIS IS THE POINT, DO YOU GET IT?
While I did appreciate many of the gestures Mullen makes, on the whole, I did not find Trimmings to be particularly contemporary in its analysis of constructing femininity through clothing. Perhaps that has something to do with the constant references to traditional effeminate colors, pink and white (as a comment on social-authoritative discourses influencing gender, color seems an appropriate topic to explore in an analysis of children and gender). Or perhaps, more likely it has to do with her use of archaic terms for clothing. All of the mentioning of all of the petticoats and the names for all the outdated undergarments began feeling cheap. Mullen explains her want to convey clothing as constructing modern femininity, and then explains she wants to include all the petticoats because she wants to bring traditional associations to the modern perception of the female images. It’s not the explanation I’m finding problematic; it’s how often Mullen mentions the archaic clothing and how heavily she relies on the archaic images when they are mentioned. There is significantly less allusion to modern day clothing of the early nineties when the book was published that there is allusion to the goddamn petticoats.
A highlight:
+“Garters garnish daughters partner what mothers they gather they tether.” (13)
This juxtaposition of a mother and a daughter wearing a garter was clever and possessed a depth in the implication that woman’s relationship to the world, especially to articles of clothing, undergoes a dramatic shift upon entering motherhood. The image of the young wearing garters and becoming decoration for partners is an interesting way to think of the scenario. The second half of the sentence describes garters tethering mothers. What an interesting image, as well as an interesting juxtaposition of the daughter and the mother.
October 30, 2021
I'm sorry but I really did not understand this! I liked the other collection from Harryette Mullen I read, Urban Tumbleweed, but all three of the books in this collection were beyond me! I think they were just too poetic, too flowery, and I just didn't understand a single poem. The book is a collection of three other poetry collections, which is important to know. Trimmings is all prose poems about... fashion? Described in a really grotesque detached way, which is kind of cool but I didn't understand the purpose. S*PeRM**K*T is the same, but more broad just about everyday things. It was cool when I could figure out what was being dissected (the one about how we put pesticides out for cockroaches because we know they'll eat us one day, I'll copy it below), but more often than not I just didn't want to put in the effort. Muse and Drudge was stylistically super different, the only one in verse, and the wordplay was more rhymy. They sounded cool but they were possibly even more inscrutable. I feel like this is kind of poetry for other poets.
Here's the roach poem. The entire book didn't have titles, so it's on pg 74.
"Kill bugs dead. Redundancy is syntactical overkill. A pinprick of peace at the end of the tunnel of a nightmare night in a roach motel. Their noise infects the dream. In black kitchens they foul the food, walk on our bodies as we sleep over oceans of pirate flags. Skull and crossbones, they crunch like candy. When we die they will eat us, unless we kill them first. Invest in better mousetraps. Take no prisoners on board ship, to rock the boat, to violate our beds with pestilence. We dream the dream of extirpation. Wipe out a species, with God at our side. Annihilate the insects. Sterilize the filthy vermin."
Here's the roach poem. The entire book didn't have titles, so it's on pg 74.
"Kill bugs dead. Redundancy is syntactical overkill. A pinprick of peace at the end of the tunnel of a nightmare night in a roach motel. Their noise infects the dream. In black kitchens they foul the food, walk on our bodies as we sleep over oceans of pirate flags. Skull and crossbones, they crunch like candy. When we die they will eat us, unless we kill them first. Invest in better mousetraps. Take no prisoners on board ship, to rock the boat, to violate our beds with pestilence. We dream the dream of extirpation. Wipe out a species, with God at our side. Annihilate the insects. Sterilize the filthy vermin."
September 24, 2022
read just s*perm**k*t for tutorial. sperm heehee. i really liked it. my favorite moments used marketing language to evoke false optimism, aggressive sanitization. plus the meat descriptions. conceptually reminded me of obit by victoria chang which i guess came out much later, for how every poem is uniform in form, and a poemy version of text/smth that already exists (obituary, supermarket aisle). i kinda wish there was more narrative throughout, like if the poems felt more intentionally ordered/we exited the supermarket in a satisfying way too
December 10, 2023
Not for me, but I loved all the turns of phrase the author used.
November 30, 2025
"mister arty martyr
a jackass to water
changing partners
in the middle of a scream" (170)
a jackass to water
changing partners
in the middle of a scream" (170)
March 10, 2024
It got nauseating to read at a center point but I know this book is technically quite good.
November 15, 2024
harryette mullen my knees are bent at your altar
March 20, 2011
Harryette Mullen is the MASTER of driving soul deep into the heart of heady notions. Luring the brain which drags along the senses down down into difficult delights, she once again makes reading feel like sex. Forgive the pun, but how the FUCK does she do it?
I first discovered Mullen through my professor Bob Holman, owner of the Bowery Poetry Club in New York and indeed, any one of her pieces selected at random is a song. WHY is she not as famous as Bob Dylan, Elliott Smith or John Lennon? "Muse & Drudge" is certainly more accessible than "I Am The Walrus."
Poetry is the freest of all the arts, requiring no tools or instruments or accompaniment. It is the poor man's music. And yet today the masses usually stay away, dismissing it as too inaccessible, too time-consuming, too opaque. I'd like to think writers like Mullen are poetry's best shot at survival, but, barring the great unplugging of Western culture, the integration of multi-media and performance poetry as seen at the Bowery Poetry Club is probably a safer bet.
I first discovered Mullen through my professor Bob Holman, owner of the Bowery Poetry Club in New York and indeed, any one of her pieces selected at random is a song. WHY is she not as famous as Bob Dylan, Elliott Smith or John Lennon? "Muse & Drudge" is certainly more accessible than "I Am The Walrus."
Poetry is the freest of all the arts, requiring no tools or instruments or accompaniment. It is the poor man's music. And yet today the masses usually stay away, dismissing it as too inaccessible, too time-consuming, too opaque. I'd like to think writers like Mullen are poetry's best shot at survival, but, barring the great unplugging of Western culture, the integration of multi-media and performance poetry as seen at the Bowery Poetry Club is probably a safer bet.
April 20, 2014
This collection of three of Mullen's previously published books, is one of the best examples I have read to date, of language poetry (a la Gertrude Stein) that refuses to be weighted down by literary theory or politics. Both "Trimmings" & "S*PeRM**K*T" take a sense of Stein's unmatched style & use it to draw attention to marketing, the body, and work as a conversation with selected work by Stein. Provocative in style & focus, I couldn't put it down. Much of the above can be said of the final "Muse & Drudge," yet her form changes a bit, and it wasn't always clear what the focus in each poem was. It seemed different that the first two collections that are represented here, and stood alone in ways I was not as connected to as with the previous work. Overall, a fine collection worth examination & much much deeper discussion of content.
October 22, 2017
If Ms. Mullen wasn't a page poet, she'd be a rock star. Some of her poems are killer lyrics to tunes yet unwritten. Everyday language and tropes turn from straw into gold by her capable pen.
April 24, 2025
from Preface: Recycle This Book
vii ‘If the encyclopedia collects general knowledge, the recyclopedia salvages and finds imaginative uses for knowledge. That’s what poetry does when it remakes and renews words, images, and ideas, transforming surplus cultural information into something unexpected.’
from Trimmings
3 ‘Becoming, for a song. A belt becomes such a small waist. Snakes around her, wrapping. Add waist to any figure, subtract, divide. Accessories multiply a look. Just the thing, a handy belt suggests embrace. Sucks her in. She buckles. Smiles, tighter. Quick to sput a bulge below the belt.’
35 ‘Her feathers, her pages. She ripples in breezes. Rim and fringe are hers. Who fancies frills. Whose finery is a summer frock, light in the wind, riffling her pages, lifting her skirt, peeking at edges. The wind blows her words away. Who can hear her voice, so soft, every ruffle made smooth. Gathering her fluttered pages, her feathers, her wings.’
50 ‘Swan neck, white shoulders, lumps of fat. A woman’s face above it all. Unriddled sphinx ‘without secrets.’ Alabaster bust, paled into significance. Clothes opening, revealing dress, as French comes into English. Suggestively, a cleavage in language.’
from S*PeRM**K*T
65 ‘Lines assemble gutter and margin. Outside and in, they straighten a place. Organize a stand. Shelve space. Square footage. Align your list or listlessness. Pushing oddly evening aisle catches the tale of an eye. Displays the cherished share. Individually wrapped singles, frozen divorced compartments, six-pack widows all express themselves while women wait in family ways, all bulging baskets, squirming young. More on line cities the eyes. Bold names label familiar type faces. Her hand scanning throwaway lines.’
74 ‘Kill bugs dead. Redundancy is syntactical overkill. A pinprick of peace at the end of the tunnel of a nightmare night in a roach motel. Their noise infects the dream. In black kitchens they foul the food, walk on our bodies as we sleep over oceans of pirate flags. Skull and crossbones, they crunch like candy. When we die they will eat us, unless we kill them first. Invest in better mousetraps. Take no prisoners on board ship, to rock the boat, to violate our beds with pestilence. We dream the dream of extirpation. Wipe out a species, with God at our side. Annihilate the insects. Sterilize the filthy vermin.’
83 ‘Well bread ain’t refined of coarse dark textures never enriched a doughty peasant. The rich finely powdered with soft white flours. Then poor got pasty pale and pure blands ingrained inbred. Roll out dough we need so what bread fortifies their minimum daily sandwich. Here’s a dry wry toast for a rough age when darker richer upper crust, flourishing, out priced the staff with moral fiber. Brown and serve, a slice of life whose side’s your butter on.’
94 ‘Refreshing spearmint gums up the words. Instant permkit combs through the wreckage. Bigger better spermkit grins down family of four. Scratch and sniff your lucky number. You may already be a wiener.’
96 ‘Flies in buttermilk. What a fellowship. That’s why white milk makes yellow butter. Homo means the same. A woman is different. Cream always rises over split milk. Muscle men drink it all in. Awesome teeth and wholesale bones. Our cows are well adjusted. The lost family album keeps saying cheese. Speed readers skim the white space of this galaxy.’
from Muse & Drudge
99 ‘Sapphire’s lyre styles
plucked eyebrows
bow lips and legs
whose lives are lonely too
my last nerve’s lucid music
sure chewed up by the juicy fruit
you must don’t like my peaches
there’s some left on the tree
you’ve had my thrills
a reefer a tub of gin
don’t mess with me I’m evil
I’m in your sin
clipped bird eclipsed moon
soon no memory of you
no drive or desire survives
you flutter invisible still’
162 ‘marry at a hotel, annul’em
nary hep male rose sullen
let alley roam, yell melon
dull normal fellow hammers omelette
divine sunrises
Osiris’s irises
his splendid mistress
is his sis Isis
creole cocoa loca
crayon gumbo boca
crayfish crayola
jumbo mocha-cola
warp maid fresh
fetish coquettish
a voyeur leers
at X-rated reels’
166 ‘if you turned down the media
so I could write a book
then you could look me up
in your voluminous recyclopedia
raped notes torn
as deep ones parted
the frank odor of the rodeo
the reason a person’
178 ‘just as I am I come
knee bent and body bowed
this here’s sorrow’s home
my body’s southern song
cram all you can
into jelly jam
preserve a feeling
keep it sweet
so beautiful it was
presumptuous to alter
the shape of my pleasure
in doing or making
proceed with abandon
finding yourself where you are
and who you’re playing for
what stray companion’
vii ‘If the encyclopedia collects general knowledge, the recyclopedia salvages and finds imaginative uses for knowledge. That’s what poetry does when it remakes and renews words, images, and ideas, transforming surplus cultural information into something unexpected.’
from Trimmings
3 ‘Becoming, for a song. A belt becomes such a small waist. Snakes around her, wrapping. Add waist to any figure, subtract, divide. Accessories multiply a look. Just the thing, a handy belt suggests embrace. Sucks her in. She buckles. Smiles, tighter. Quick to sput a bulge below the belt.’
35 ‘Her feathers, her pages. She ripples in breezes. Rim and fringe are hers. Who fancies frills. Whose finery is a summer frock, light in the wind, riffling her pages, lifting her skirt, peeking at edges. The wind blows her words away. Who can hear her voice, so soft, every ruffle made smooth. Gathering her fluttered pages, her feathers, her wings.’
50 ‘Swan neck, white shoulders, lumps of fat. A woman’s face above it all. Unriddled sphinx ‘without secrets.’ Alabaster bust, paled into significance. Clothes opening, revealing dress, as French comes into English. Suggestively, a cleavage in language.’
from S*PeRM**K*T
65 ‘Lines assemble gutter and margin. Outside and in, they straighten a place. Organize a stand. Shelve space. Square footage. Align your list or listlessness. Pushing oddly evening aisle catches the tale of an eye. Displays the cherished share. Individually wrapped singles, frozen divorced compartments, six-pack widows all express themselves while women wait in family ways, all bulging baskets, squirming young. More on line cities the eyes. Bold names label familiar type faces. Her hand scanning throwaway lines.’
74 ‘Kill bugs dead. Redundancy is syntactical overkill. A pinprick of peace at the end of the tunnel of a nightmare night in a roach motel. Their noise infects the dream. In black kitchens they foul the food, walk on our bodies as we sleep over oceans of pirate flags. Skull and crossbones, they crunch like candy. When we die they will eat us, unless we kill them first. Invest in better mousetraps. Take no prisoners on board ship, to rock the boat, to violate our beds with pestilence. We dream the dream of extirpation. Wipe out a species, with God at our side. Annihilate the insects. Sterilize the filthy vermin.’
83 ‘Well bread ain’t refined of coarse dark textures never enriched a doughty peasant. The rich finely powdered with soft white flours. Then poor got pasty pale and pure blands ingrained inbred. Roll out dough we need so what bread fortifies their minimum daily sandwich. Here’s a dry wry toast for a rough age when darker richer upper crust, flourishing, out priced the staff with moral fiber. Brown and serve, a slice of life whose side’s your butter on.’
94 ‘Refreshing spearmint gums up the words. Instant permkit combs through the wreckage. Bigger better spermkit grins down family of four. Scratch and sniff your lucky number. You may already be a wiener.’
96 ‘Flies in buttermilk. What a fellowship. That’s why white milk makes yellow butter. Homo means the same. A woman is different. Cream always rises over split milk. Muscle men drink it all in. Awesome teeth and wholesale bones. Our cows are well adjusted. The lost family album keeps saying cheese. Speed readers skim the white space of this galaxy.’
from Muse & Drudge
99 ‘Sapphire’s lyre styles
plucked eyebrows
bow lips and legs
whose lives are lonely too
my last nerve’s lucid music
sure chewed up by the juicy fruit
you must don’t like my peaches
there’s some left on the tree
you’ve had my thrills
a reefer a tub of gin
don’t mess with me I’m evil
I’m in your sin
clipped bird eclipsed moon
soon no memory of you
no drive or desire survives
you flutter invisible still’
162 ‘marry at a hotel, annul’em
nary hep male rose sullen
let alley roam, yell melon
dull normal fellow hammers omelette
divine sunrises
Osiris’s irises
his splendid mistress
is his sis Isis
creole cocoa loca
crayon gumbo boca
crayfish crayola
jumbo mocha-cola
warp maid fresh
fetish coquettish
a voyeur leers
at X-rated reels’
166 ‘if you turned down the media
so I could write a book
then you could look me up
in your voluminous recyclopedia
raped notes torn
as deep ones parted
the frank odor of the rodeo
the reason a person’
178 ‘just as I am I come
knee bent and body bowed
this here’s sorrow’s home
my body’s southern song
cram all you can
into jelly jam
preserve a feeling
keep it sweet
so beautiful it was
presumptuous to alter
the shape of my pleasure
in doing or making
proceed with abandon
finding yourself where you are
and who you’re playing for
what stray companion’
January 2, 2020
I almost got rid of this book years ago. My justification for keeping it was something along the lines of: Look at what kind of shit award-winning, post-modern poets can get away with! The only reason I'm giving this two stars is because the concept is somewhat interesting, Mullen's wordplay is intricate, and there's a lot of emphasis placed on the sound in each poem.
Recyclopedia is a collection of three of Mullen's poetry books: Trimmings basically focuses on women and how they are objectified and accessorized (yeah, yeah, I get it, people like seeing us in frilly lingerie, but I don't need to read fifty poems about it); S*PeRM**K*T—haha, SPeRM, so clever!—basically focuses on mass-produced goods, marketing, and consumerism; and Muse & Drudge apparently has something to do with black identity, but this wasn't readily apparent to me when I read most of the poems. This part was supposedly inspired by blues, and there's a lot of improvised nonsense words. The works in the first two books are fairly short prose poems (some only a sentence long), while the poems in the last book consist of four unrhymed (with few exceptions) quatrains.
I don't like Mullen's poetry at all. In the intro she writes about how she wanted to create poetry that's difficult to understand...well, mission accomplished! Her poems have a bizarre stream-of-consciousness style where she'll throw in slant rhymes, alliteration, puns, fragments of idioms, etc. to the point where meaning is almost obscured and the writing becomes almost totally about language itself. While this "playful" type of poetry isn't my cup of tea, I can appreciate the intent behind it...except I'm skeptical of the author's claims that feminism and identity politics are a driving force in her poems.
Excerpts, just for fun:
"Some panties are plenty. Some are scanty. Some or any/Some is ante." (p23) (this is the poem in it's entirety)
"Aren't you glad you use petroleum? Don't wait to be told/you explode. You're not fully here until you're over there./Never let them see you eat. You might be taken for a zoo./Raise your hand if you're sure you're not." (p. 69) (this is the poem in its entirety)
"Off the pig, ya dig? He squeals, grease the sucker. Hack that/fatback, pour the pork. Pig out, rib the fellas. Ham it up/hype the tripe. Save your bacon, bring home some. Sweet/dreams pigmeat. Pork belly futures, larded accounts, hog/heaven. Little piggish to market. Tub of guts hog wilding." (from p.82)
"Flies in buttermilk. What a fellowship. That's why white/milk makes yellow butter. Homo means the same. A woman/is different. Cream always rises over spilt milk. Muscle men/drink it all in. Awesome teeth and wholesale bones." (from p.96)
"software design for/legible bachelors/up to their eyeballs/in hype-writer fonts" (from p. 140)
"tussy-mussy mufti/hefty duty rufty-tufty/flub dub terra incog/mulched hearts agog" (from p. 146)
"spazingy spigades/splibby splabibs/choice voice noise/gets dress and breath" (from p.163)
Poems that I liked:
0/172 (0%!)
Recyclopedia is a collection of three of Mullen's poetry books: Trimmings basically focuses on women and how they are objectified and accessorized (yeah, yeah, I get it, people like seeing us in frilly lingerie, but I don't need to read fifty poems about it); S*PeRM**K*T—haha, SPeRM, so clever!—basically focuses on mass-produced goods, marketing, and consumerism; and Muse & Drudge apparently has something to do with black identity, but this wasn't readily apparent to me when I read most of the poems. This part was supposedly inspired by blues, and there's a lot of improvised nonsense words. The works in the first two books are fairly short prose poems (some only a sentence long), while the poems in the last book consist of four unrhymed (with few exceptions) quatrains.
I don't like Mullen's poetry at all. In the intro she writes about how she wanted to create poetry that's difficult to understand...well, mission accomplished! Her poems have a bizarre stream-of-consciousness style where she'll throw in slant rhymes, alliteration, puns, fragments of idioms, etc. to the point where meaning is almost obscured and the writing becomes almost totally about language itself. While this "playful" type of poetry isn't my cup of tea, I can appreciate the intent behind it...except I'm skeptical of the author's claims that feminism and identity politics are a driving force in her poems.
Excerpts, just for fun:
"Some panties are plenty. Some are scanty. Some or any/Some is ante." (p23) (this is the poem in it's entirety)
"Aren't you glad you use petroleum? Don't wait to be told/you explode. You're not fully here until you're over there./Never let them see you eat. You might be taken for a zoo./Raise your hand if you're sure you're not." (p. 69) (this is the poem in its entirety)
"Off the pig, ya dig? He squeals, grease the sucker. Hack that/fatback, pour the pork. Pig out, rib the fellas. Ham it up/hype the tripe. Save your bacon, bring home some. Sweet/dreams pigmeat. Pork belly futures, larded accounts, hog/heaven. Little piggish to market. Tub of guts hog wilding." (from p.82)
"Flies in buttermilk. What a fellowship. That's why white/milk makes yellow butter. Homo means the same. A woman/is different. Cream always rises over spilt milk. Muscle men/drink it all in. Awesome teeth and wholesale bones." (from p.96)
"software design for/legible bachelors/up to their eyeballs/in hype-writer fonts" (from p. 140)
"tussy-mussy mufti/hefty duty rufty-tufty/flub dub terra incog/mulched hearts agog" (from p. 146)
"spazingy spigades/splibby splabibs/choice voice noise/gets dress and breath" (from p.163)
Poems that I liked:
0/172 (0%!)
March 20, 2024
Harryette Mullen uses distinctly abstract poetic structures in her three-part collection, Recyclopedia: Trimmings, S*PeRM**K*T, and Muse & Drudge. Through her series of single stanza prose poetry of Trimmings and S*PeRM**K*T, followed by the four-line, four stanza works of Muse & Drudge, Mullen explores themes of race, femininity, “sexuality,” and “domesticity” using word play that subtly employs textures and the senses which allow her to speak in code to readers (ix). Words with double meanings are seen throughout her work, like in her description of a stolen leather purse on page 4, which uses the words “strapped, broke” that both imply a wanting or lack of money in addition to the physical state of the purse having broken leather straps. The phrase “strapped, broke” bridges the description of the purse and the description of the robbery, an indication of the desperate state of the robber. This minimalist, detail-oriented, punny form of storytelling characterizes Mullen’s ability to make short statements that are still able to communicate a rich intention. Her storytelling extends beyond everyday events as she pens clever prose about famous artwork that manage to identify and critique the piece without even needing to name the painting or artist. On page 11, Mullen captures Manet’s Olympia in just seven sentences:
"A light white disgraceful sugar looks pink, wears an air, pale compared to shadow standing by. To plump recliner, naked truth lies. Behind her shadow wears her color, arms full of flowers. A rosy charm is pink. And she is ink. The mistress wears no petticoat or leaves. The other in shadow, a large, pink dress."
Her use of connotative words both describe the details of the painting and highlight the undertone of dismissiveness towards the figure of Laure, a Black woman. Mullen’s tone and subject matter remain coherent throughout the rest of Trimmings as she continues to weave thematic strands of race, clothing, and femininity into the aesthetic of classic French fashion using words and phrases like “bodice”(44), “straps, laces. Garters, corsets”(34), “silk stockings...blue-vein stock”(15), “blue-ribbon blonde”(51), “petite cliché”(21), and “misfits, women in breaches”(46). One of her most impressively concise incorporations of all four themes appears on page 43—
“In feathers, in bananas, in her own skin, intelligent body attached to a gaze. Stripped down model, posing for savage art, brought color to a primitive stage”
—a poem that seems to be referencing the legendary life of the beautiful Joesphine Baker, a Black woman who used racist notions of the “primitive” to her advantage by wearing the infamous banana skirt in several of her famous shows in Paris. These French details are possibly a nod— or a rebuttal— to Gertrude Stein’s own association with Paris. Mullen’s respect for Stein’s work was “hard won,” and as she takes on projects that “correspond to the “Objects” and “Food” sections of Stein’s Tender Buttons”(x), Mullen shows a sophisticated incorporation of Stein’s technique that evolves into a piece that is full of intention and meaning, which sets it apart from the abstraction and generalization of Tender Buttons. Her work functions as a response to “Stein’s simple yet elusive poetic prose” (ix) with a contrasting collection that bursts with meaning, a coded tapestry of phrases infused with Mullen’s identity as a Black woman. In her foreword, Mullen states plainly that “while many readers perceive Muse and Drudge as a more insistently ‘black’ text than the other two, I have written all of these works from my perspective as a black woman” (xi). Her work in Trimmings makes clear her critique of the white supremacy and racist perceptions of classical Europe and how this history still influences fashion and body trends today.
As Mullen moves to S*PeRM**K*T, she turns her meditative focus to consumerism and humanity’s relationship with materials, animals, and food— an appropriate response to the prompt of Stein’s focus on glorifying culinary domestic delights in the “Food” section of Tender Buttons. Mullen’s tone is sardonic and disapproving as she composes phrases like “see Rover choose a rubber toy over puppy kibble” (77), “Align your list or listlessness… hand scanning throwaway lines” (65), and “when we die they will eat us, unless we kill them first” (74). Her use of connotative words, such as those used in “hard packed slab of ice aged mammoth”(73) points to her disapproval towards humanity’s tendency to reduce dignified creatures to depressing packaged meat, in turn wiping out both animal species and important resources. On page 72, she writes: “Iron maidens make docile martyrs. Their bodies on the racks stretch taut. Honing hunger to perfection, aglow in nimbus flash. A few lean slicks, to cover a multitude, fix a feast for the eyes. They starve for all the things we crave,” a poem that paints a simple yet disturbing image of human exploitation as well. Deepening this theme, she critiques the upper crust on page 83, using racially coded language, “the rich finely powdered with soft white flowers...ingrained inbred... darker richer upper crust, flourishing, out priced the staff with moral fiber. Brown and serve.” Using clever, yet stern language, S*PeRM**K*T functions as an attack on the white, capitalist systems in place while also accomplishing the level of wordplay Stein’s “Food” is praised for, if not a higher one as she profoundly complicates the prompt of “food.”
Mullen continues to infuse her work with meaningful personal themes like race, history, and sex as she turns to Muse & Drudge, which successfully bridges the subjects of the first two sections. Muse & Drudge is a feast for the senses as Mullen creates cryptic portraits of fluctuating scope, funneling the abstractions of Trimmings and S*PeRM**K*T into a more traditional poetic form as she paints brief scenes centered around subjects as specific as a sexual encounter where a woman asserts her right to pleasure— “she gets to the getting place / without or with him... she gave him lemons to suck / told him please dear / improve your embouchure” (149)— while others grapple with broader issues of suffering racial exploitation and one’s relationship to identity. She celebrates Blackness throughout the text, using phrases like “the blacker more sweeter juicier / pores sweat into blackberry tangles” (101), “black dreams you came” (111), “she dreads her hair / sprung from lock down” (133) and references the plenty of “hot water bread / fresh water trout… women of honey harmonies offer / alfalfa wild flower buckwheat and clover / to feed Oshun” (135) that celebrates the goddess Oshun of the Yoruba religion. She rebuts the historical favor of whiteness, proclaiming “pancakes pale and butter can go rancid” (132). The themes of Mullen’s work remain incredibly cohesive and poignant within their cryptic form, as Mullen meditates on both the hurt and love of human existence.
Through her arrangement of Recycolopedia, Mullen’s crafts an expansive cultural critique through the framework of the playful wording of Stein’s Tender Buttons. In her own words, Mullen’s Recyclopedia “salvages and finds imaginative uses for knowledge” as she “transforms surplus cultural information into something unexpected” (vii). Her work takes the facts, objects, and concepts of life and weaves them into flavorful, bite-sized prose poetry that testifies to her power as an observer and wordsmith. Like a stream of consciousness, readers are fed bundles of associations that ultimately translate to the inner thoughts and convictions of a quick-moving and brilliant mind.
"A light white disgraceful sugar looks pink, wears an air, pale compared to shadow standing by. To plump recliner, naked truth lies. Behind her shadow wears her color, arms full of flowers. A rosy charm is pink. And she is ink. The mistress wears no petticoat or leaves. The other in shadow, a large, pink dress."
Her use of connotative words both describe the details of the painting and highlight the undertone of dismissiveness towards the figure of Laure, a Black woman. Mullen’s tone and subject matter remain coherent throughout the rest of Trimmings as she continues to weave thematic strands of race, clothing, and femininity into the aesthetic of classic French fashion using words and phrases like “bodice”(44), “straps, laces. Garters, corsets”(34), “silk stockings...blue-vein stock”(15), “blue-ribbon blonde”(51), “petite cliché”(21), and “misfits, women in breaches”(46). One of her most impressively concise incorporations of all four themes appears on page 43—
“In feathers, in bananas, in her own skin, intelligent body attached to a gaze. Stripped down model, posing for savage art, brought color to a primitive stage”
—a poem that seems to be referencing the legendary life of the beautiful Joesphine Baker, a Black woman who used racist notions of the “primitive” to her advantage by wearing the infamous banana skirt in several of her famous shows in Paris. These French details are possibly a nod— or a rebuttal— to Gertrude Stein’s own association with Paris. Mullen’s respect for Stein’s work was “hard won,” and as she takes on projects that “correspond to the “Objects” and “Food” sections of Stein’s Tender Buttons”(x), Mullen shows a sophisticated incorporation of Stein’s technique that evolves into a piece that is full of intention and meaning, which sets it apart from the abstraction and generalization of Tender Buttons. Her work functions as a response to “Stein’s simple yet elusive poetic prose” (ix) with a contrasting collection that bursts with meaning, a coded tapestry of phrases infused with Mullen’s identity as a Black woman. In her foreword, Mullen states plainly that “while many readers perceive Muse and Drudge as a more insistently ‘black’ text than the other two, I have written all of these works from my perspective as a black woman” (xi). Her work in Trimmings makes clear her critique of the white supremacy and racist perceptions of classical Europe and how this history still influences fashion and body trends today.
As Mullen moves to S*PeRM**K*T, she turns her meditative focus to consumerism and humanity’s relationship with materials, animals, and food— an appropriate response to the prompt of Stein’s focus on glorifying culinary domestic delights in the “Food” section of Tender Buttons. Mullen’s tone is sardonic and disapproving as she composes phrases like “see Rover choose a rubber toy over puppy kibble” (77), “Align your list or listlessness… hand scanning throwaway lines” (65), and “when we die they will eat us, unless we kill them first” (74). Her use of connotative words, such as those used in “hard packed slab of ice aged mammoth”(73) points to her disapproval towards humanity’s tendency to reduce dignified creatures to depressing packaged meat, in turn wiping out both animal species and important resources. On page 72, she writes: “Iron maidens make docile martyrs. Their bodies on the racks stretch taut. Honing hunger to perfection, aglow in nimbus flash. A few lean slicks, to cover a multitude, fix a feast for the eyes. They starve for all the things we crave,” a poem that paints a simple yet disturbing image of human exploitation as well. Deepening this theme, she critiques the upper crust on page 83, using racially coded language, “the rich finely powdered with soft white flowers...ingrained inbred... darker richer upper crust, flourishing, out priced the staff with moral fiber. Brown and serve.” Using clever, yet stern language, S*PeRM**K*T functions as an attack on the white, capitalist systems in place while also accomplishing the level of wordplay Stein’s “Food” is praised for, if not a higher one as she profoundly complicates the prompt of “food.”
Mullen continues to infuse her work with meaningful personal themes like race, history, and sex as she turns to Muse & Drudge, which successfully bridges the subjects of the first two sections. Muse & Drudge is a feast for the senses as Mullen creates cryptic portraits of fluctuating scope, funneling the abstractions of Trimmings and S*PeRM**K*T into a more traditional poetic form as she paints brief scenes centered around subjects as specific as a sexual encounter where a woman asserts her right to pleasure— “she gets to the getting place / without or with him... she gave him lemons to suck / told him please dear / improve your embouchure” (149)— while others grapple with broader issues of suffering racial exploitation and one’s relationship to identity. She celebrates Blackness throughout the text, using phrases like “the blacker more sweeter juicier / pores sweat into blackberry tangles” (101), “black dreams you came” (111), “she dreads her hair / sprung from lock down” (133) and references the plenty of “hot water bread / fresh water trout… women of honey harmonies offer / alfalfa wild flower buckwheat and clover / to feed Oshun” (135) that celebrates the goddess Oshun of the Yoruba religion. She rebuts the historical favor of whiteness, proclaiming “pancakes pale and butter can go rancid” (132). The themes of Mullen’s work remain incredibly cohesive and poignant within their cryptic form, as Mullen meditates on both the hurt and love of human existence.
Through her arrangement of Recycolopedia, Mullen’s crafts an expansive cultural critique through the framework of the playful wording of Stein’s Tender Buttons. In her own words, Mullen’s Recyclopedia “salvages and finds imaginative uses for knowledge” as she “transforms surplus cultural information into something unexpected” (vii). Her work takes the facts, objects, and concepts of life and weaves them into flavorful, bite-sized prose poetry that testifies to her power as an observer and wordsmith. Like a stream of consciousness, readers are fed bundles of associations that ultimately translate to the inner thoughts and convictions of a quick-moving and brilliant mind.
January 12, 2024
"Releases from valises. Scientific briefs. Chemists model molecular shadows structure mimic dancers. Shirt on the line, a flapper's shimmy shake in a silk chemise. A shift, a woman's movement, a loose garment of manmade fabric. Polly and Esther living modern with better chemistry" (17)
"A name adores a Freudian slip" (18)
"Tiny binary aftermath figure. Navel baste playmates with ultimate breeder of nuclear families. Suburban bombshell shelters magazines of big guns aiming to sell inny things or nothing at all" (24)
"Harmless amulets arm little limbs with poise and charm" (42)
"With brand new feet walks unsteady on land, each step an ache" (59)
"Aren't you glad you use petroleum? Don't wait to be told you explode. You're not fully here until you're over there. Never let them see you eat. You might be taken for a zoo. Raise your hand if you're sure you're not" (69)
"A dream of eggplant or zucchini may produce fresh desires. Some fruits are vegetables. The way we bruise and wilt, all perishable" (84)
"dead on arrival
overdosed on whatever
excess of hate and love
I sleep alone
if you were there
then please come in
tell me what's good
think up something" (122)
"my dreams could take
advantage of me and no
one would tell me because
they don't know where to reach me" (128)
"moon, whoever knew you
had a high IQ until tonight
so high and mighty bright
poets salute you with haiku" (138)
"raped notes torn
as deep ones parted
the frank odor of the rodeo
the reason a person" (166)
"a planet struck by fragments
of a shattered comet
tell it after the break
save it for the next segment" (172)
"A name adores a Freudian slip" (18)
"Tiny binary aftermath figure. Navel baste playmates with ultimate breeder of nuclear families. Suburban bombshell shelters magazines of big guns aiming to sell inny things or nothing at all" (24)
"Harmless amulets arm little limbs with poise and charm" (42)
"With brand new feet walks unsteady on land, each step an ache" (59)
"Aren't you glad you use petroleum? Don't wait to be told you explode. You're not fully here until you're over there. Never let them see you eat. You might be taken for a zoo. Raise your hand if you're sure you're not" (69)
"A dream of eggplant or zucchini may produce fresh desires. Some fruits are vegetables. The way we bruise and wilt, all perishable" (84)
"dead on arrival
overdosed on whatever
excess of hate and love
I sleep alone
if you were there
then please come in
tell me what's good
think up something" (122)
"my dreams could take
advantage of me and no
one would tell me because
they don't know where to reach me" (128)
"moon, whoever knew you
had a high IQ until tonight
so high and mighty bright
poets salute you with haiku" (138)
"raped notes torn
as deep ones parted
the frank odor of the rodeo
the reason a person" (166)
"a planet struck by fragments
of a shattered comet
tell it after the break
save it for the next segment" (172)
December 14, 2024
💯💯💯one of the greatest to ever do it. Mullens poetry is its own sect of language. She turns words upside down. Always exciting to read.
“wine's wicked wine's divine
pickled drunk down to the rind
depression ham ain't got no bone
watermelons rampant emblazoned
island named Dawta
Gullah backwater
she swim she fish
here it be fresh
cassava yuca taro dasheen
spicy yam okra vinegary greens
guava salt cod catfish ackee
fatmeat's greasy that's too easy
not to be outdone she put
the big pot in the little pot
when you get food this good
you know the cook stuck her foot in it”
Another poem I really liked was
ain't your fancy
handsome gal
feets too big
my hair don't twirl
from hunger call
on the telephone
asking my oven
for some warm jellyroll
if I can't have love
I'll take sunshine
if I'm too plain for champagne
I'll go float on red wine
what you can do
is what women do
I know you know
what I mean, don't you
“wine's wicked wine's divine
pickled drunk down to the rind
depression ham ain't got no bone
watermelons rampant emblazoned
island named Dawta
Gullah backwater
she swim she fish
here it be fresh
cassava yuca taro dasheen
spicy yam okra vinegary greens
guava salt cod catfish ackee
fatmeat's greasy that's too easy
not to be outdone she put
the big pot in the little pot
when you get food this good
you know the cook stuck her foot in it”
Another poem I really liked was
ain't your fancy
handsome gal
feets too big
my hair don't twirl
from hunger call
on the telephone
asking my oven
for some warm jellyroll
if I can't have love
I'll take sunshine
if I'm too plain for champagne
I'll go float on red wine
what you can do
is what women do
I know you know
what I mean, don't you
May 1, 2022
A word nerd's dream: Mullen twists and flips phrases and meanings around with almost childlike delight and your brain and mouth contort along with her, puzzling through the poems like a primary colour maze.
Each book has its own flavour: Trimmings's sensuality, S*PeRM*K*T's wry consumerism, Muse's encompassing flow on life. You'll find yourself returning, wringing out a new turn and facet.
Mullen's style admittedly is not warm. It jangles and flashes, and at times hampered my ability to fall into and really connect with the poems. Intellectually, absolutely, though spiritually it feels hard to get to the depths.
But it's wholly originally and FUN, without the self seriousness and with the occasional deliciously hooked barb.
Each book has its own flavour: Trimmings's sensuality, S*PeRM*K*T's wry consumerism, Muse's encompassing flow on life. You'll find yourself returning, wringing out a new turn and facet.
Mullen's style admittedly is not warm. It jangles and flashes, and at times hampered my ability to fall into and really connect with the poems. Intellectually, absolutely, though spiritually it feels hard to get to the depths.
But it's wholly originally and FUN, without the self seriousness and with the occasional deliciously hooked barb.
September 24, 2025
"tomboy girl with cowboy boots
takes coy bow in prom gown"
"Bare skin almost, underworn"
"white covers of black material
dense fabric that obeys its own logic"
I have found a book that I would take with me to a desert island. I learned about Harryette Mullen's work late in life, and now I am catching up. Recyclopedia collects three of her books that are similar in their multi-layered, wordplay-heavy, vernacular and high culture reference-laden approach (though the first two are prose poems and the third one is in quatrains). Each book is a complete, unified work that also has links to the others. This collection is an astounding achievement.
takes coy bow in prom gown"
"Bare skin almost, underworn"
"white covers of black material
dense fabric that obeys its own logic"
I have found a book that I would take with me to a desert island. I learned about Harryette Mullen's work late in life, and now I am catching up. Recyclopedia collects three of her books that are similar in their multi-layered, wordplay-heavy, vernacular and high culture reference-laden approach (though the first two are prose poems and the third one is in quatrains). Each book is a complete, unified work that also has links to the others. This collection is an astounding achievement.
November 25, 2020
3.5 stars
A modern response to Stein's work, Tender Buttons. I appreciated this response more than the original content perhaps, shamefully admitted, because I relate to modern writing with themes of gender more deeply when the writing speaks to experiences I am personally familiar with. Aside from that fact, I appreciated the balance of experimentation and balanced adherence to traditional writing conventions; I followed the writing. Mullen's command of imagery and metonymy also plays well in this writing.
A modern response to Stein's work, Tender Buttons. I appreciated this response more than the original content perhaps, shamefully admitted, because I relate to modern writing with themes of gender more deeply when the writing speaks to experiences I am personally familiar with. Aside from that fact, I appreciated the balance of experimentation and balanced adherence to traditional writing conventions; I followed the writing. Mullen's command of imagery and metonymy also plays well in this writing.
January 14, 2020
**4 stars**
Mullen's poetry collections are full of references, puns, and linguistic playfulness. She is inventive and innovative with form and content in Trimmings, S*PeRM**K*T, and Muse & Drudge (the collections encompassed in Recyclopedia). I recommend her if you're willing to work to discern the meanings of her poems and/or you like avant-garde/experimental or LANGUAGE poetry. If you want easily readable poetry, then Mullen is not for you.
Mullen's poetry collections are full of references, puns, and linguistic playfulness. She is inventive and innovative with form and content in Trimmings, S*PeRM**K*T, and Muse & Drudge (the collections encompassed in Recyclopedia). I recommend her if you're willing to work to discern the meanings of her poems and/or you like avant-garde/experimental or LANGUAGE poetry. If you want easily readable poetry, then Mullen is not for you.
November 16, 2018
A truly amazing read. It's easy to think her work is just a spraying of words on a page. Trust me though. Read one interview with her and you'll see how deeply dense and majestic these poems are!
November 18, 2019
I have a hard time with poetry don’t eat me alive I know this is probably worth more than I’ve given it
January 15, 2020
“it’s snowing on the radio”
February 12, 2021
Fantastic collection. Outstanding verse and a great response to Gertrude Stein
April 16, 2021
undoubtedly a groundbreaking work, just not entirely for me and i had to read it way too quickly (for class) so didn't get to take it all in
Read
July 8, 2021Not quite my thing, but I respect the experimentation and wordplay.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 62 reviews