2nd ANNUAL NAPOMO 30/30/30 :: DAY 27 :: BENJAMIN WIESSNER on HARRYETTE MULLEN
I am going to start with an admission—I have a deep and varied past with the poetry of Harryette Mullen. Her masterpiece, Sleeping with the Dictionary, opened my eyes to so many possibilities in poetry. The experience I had is described best by her line, “I’ve been licked all over by the English tongue.” The book sparked some of the experimentation and play that led me to explore OuLiPo and Dada in college and later become a part of Exit Strata. What amazed me from the very beginning was how her wordplay did not stray to become glib or flippant. Instead, it measures the heaviness that her words push against.
Mullen uses those words to carve an artistic space for herself that is not contained only within black or woman. In Sleeping with the Dictionary, Mullen writes as a whole creative being, in full possession of the craft. The cultural criticism and profound sense of social justice in her work rings truer because she already is dismantling the barriers of form and language. A few years ago, my mother asked me to recommend some books of poetry as creative supplements for the course she taught on race—Harryette Mullen came out of my mouth before the question was even finished. Not for the explicit themes of her poems, but her ability to both inhabit and transcend cultural disparateness.
Another of her books, Muse & Drudge, represented a much different turning point for me. She composed the volume out of quatrains, four per page, that capitalize only proper nouns and run throughout without punctuations—save for a couple of em dashes. A page will run:
keep your powder dry
your knees together
your dress down
your drawers shut
a picture perfect
twisted her limbs
lovely as a tree
for art’s sake
muse of the world picks
out stark melodies
her raspy fabric
tickling the ebonies
you can sing their songs
with words your way
put it over to the people
know what you doing
Each quatrain straddles the line between narrative and lyric. However, Mullen shears each narrative thread before the reader can pull too much of the yarn. Each page does comprise a full tonal resonance, but as soon as the pages change the course of the poetry does as well. The book proceeds to flood the reader with rich images and dark flashes of experience.
I first read Muse & Drudge toward the end of college. By then, I had all due reverence for the modern poetic sequence, lyrical muscle, and the critical genius of Rosenthal and Gall. Yet, the budding scholar in me found itself yielding to an unfamiliar force while reading the book length poem. I suddenly felt the deep desire to copy all the pages and then reorder them. I wanted to create thematic arcs and footnotes on Bessie Smith songs. In short, Muse & Drudge created the editor in me.
Slowly, rereading the stanzas I finally was able to give myself over to Mullen’s pace and vision. Each page full of quatrains becomes its own tiny museum room filled with cultural language getting bent and cut open to expose the inner matter. Mullen possesses an avid collector’s care with the worlds her words briefly bring to life:
wine’s wicked wine’s divine
pickled drunk down to the rind
depression ham ain’t got no bone
watermelons rampant emblazoned
island name Dawta
Gullah backwater
she swim she fish
here it be fresh
cassava yucca 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
There have been whole nights where I read Muse & Drudge aloud to myself, and start the poem again. Those nights, I let the language bathe me. I come out clean and changed, because the pages let me know that what is outside of myself is just as complex and specific and infinite as what is inside me. Mullen has a singular strength in her writing that allows her poetry to play at the same time that it is suffering. I have an admission—that is exactly how I try to suffer.
by the dancerly light
the dewy cotton
oversized tee shirt
your shape shows through
sink your pinky
into the biscuit’s heart
fill the void you made
with blackstrap molasses
you sink to your knees
but it isn’t hallowed
it is coffee ground
sprinkled round azaleas
soft sung mantras
of hush little baby
lullabies of past lives
we used to be
Benjamin Wiessner appreciates a well-placed em dash. He still listens to that song by Petey Pablo and he believes in the untapped culinary power of country ham. He values sensible footwear. He always keeps a tent in his trunk. He was raised to witness the emancipatory power of storytelling. These are all source texts for his aesthetics. He is an editor here at Exit Strata. He also works with the film collective ornana. Their first feature, euphonia, premiered this spring at SxSw and is now available for free.
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2ND ANNUAL 30/30/30 POETRY MONTH SERIES:
previous:
DAY 26 :: JASON GRABOWSKI ON FRANK O’HARA
next:
DAY 28 :: BUD BERKICH ON WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
