Customer Reviews

Recyclopedia: Trimmings, S*PeRM**K*T, and Muse & Drudge

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Mullen's three book collection is vertiginous and virtuosic. Her punning and homophonic-connotative cleverness which stacks her poems into multi-valenced spinning tops dizzies one's head with cloudy turbulence. She should be written multiple "wolf tickets" for speeding. If you don't appreciate this book on a first read, please revisit it at a later date.

three previously released publications now between one cover, recycled as it were, in a recyclopedia, though the recycling aspect has referents as accurate to the puns ms mullen delights in.

in her first collected book she cites gertrude stein as gadfly, and i see no reason to look further. the snippets from Trimmings, terse sentences about the clothing and accessories of women, speak to stein's sense of word play. in toto:

'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.'

S*PeRM**K*T (supermarket) continues the wordplay, puns and associations within the same form as Trimmings, continuing her scratching of stein. this time she turns to food in as many permutations as she can cook up. something for the man of the house:

'What's brewing when a guy pops the top off a bottle or can talk with another man after a real good sweat. It opens, pours a cold stream of the great outdoors. Hunting a wild six-pack reminds him of football and women and other blood spoors. Frequent channels keep high volume foamy liquids overflowing, not to be contained. Champs, heroes, hard workers all back-lit with ornate gold of cowboy sunset lift dashing white heads, those burly mugs.'

Muse & Drudge (either verb or noun or both) takes a cummings' leap to quatrains in lowercase, absence of capital letters is her only comparison to cummings. in subject matter as well as wordplay mullen has her own work cut out with her word associations, the pun and the steps of the assonance, her literary roots go deeper than cummings, tapping into john skeleton more so than her claims of sappho. she cites her title from callimachus. i see the muse and the drudge transcendent from sappho and sapphire as figures to categories. what ms mullen has given her reader in Muse & Drudge is picture of black women historically and internationally.

'honey jars of hair
skin and nail conjuration
a racy make-up artist collects herself
in time for a major retrospection

her lady's severe beauty
and downright manner
enhance the harsh landscape
positioned with urban product

mule for hire or worse
beast of burden down when I lay
clean and repair the universe
lawdy lawdy hallelujah when I lay

tragic yellow mattress
belatedly beladied blues
shines staggerly avid diva
ruses of the lunatic muse'

mullen's work is interactive and entertaining, highly rewarding for readers who choose to spend time here.

This is one of my favorite poetry books. Harryette Mullen is a master (mistress?) of wordplay. This is a collection of three previously published collections. I am most fond of "Trimmings," Mullen's mini-poems using women's clothing as a basis for alliteration, puns, observation and commentary mixed together. "Supermarket" (or "S*PeRM**K*T) does something similar with food. "Muse & and Drudge" is a bit different, a collection of poems that are more song-like with elements of blues although also full of alliteration and puns. The poems appear inspired by aspects of American consumerism, race and women's experience among other themes.

Share this book with your poet-friends, family, random people you meet on the street. Avant-Garde poetry at its best. This book is changing my life. Harryette Mullen is brilliant and inspiring!