“Sleeping with the Dictionary” by Harryette Mullen was published in her book of the same title in 2002. Sleeping with the Dictionary, Mullen’s fifth poetry collection, is inspired by the French Oulipo literary movement. Sleeping with the Dictionary was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

“Sleeping with the Dictionary” is a prose poem that utilizes many puns, double entendre, and alliteration. It connects the act of reading the dictionary with sex and love, investigates the speaker’s relationship to language, and explores transient or liminal space (spaces located between fixed states).

Poet Biography

Born 1953 in Florence, Alabama, Harryette Mullen was raised in Fort Worth, Texas, and in Pennsylvania. The differences in vernacular English between the three states created language barriers between the poet and other children her age—especially the differences in African American Vernacular English (AAVE). Mullen’s parents were divorced, and had family in both the South and New England, causing similar differences at home. These barriers and linguistic nuances informed Mullen’s later career as a poet and educator.

Mullen was educated in similarly diverse locations. She received her bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Texas at Austin in 1975. She joined the Artists in Schools program in Texas—the work of the Texas Commission on the Arts to develop a uniquely Texan artist community to stimulate the development of young artists. Fifteen years later in 1990, she completed her Ph.D. at UC Santa Cruz. Mullen taught poetry at various institutions: as a faculty fellow at Cornell, a Rockefeller Fellow at the University of Rochester, and as a faculty member of the University of California, Los Angeles—a position she presently holds in 2022.

Mullen’s first published book—a poetry collection—was Tree Tall Woman (1981). She published eight more collections of poetry, as well as a collection of essays and interviews. Her collections and recollections won several awards, including the PEN Beyond Margins award in 2006, and a Jackson Poetry Prize in 2010. Mullen was awarded grants by the Foundation for Contemporary Arts in 2004, the United States Art Fellowship in 2008, and the Academy of American Poets Fellowship in 2009.

Poem Text

Mullen, Harryette. “Sleeping with the Dictionary.” 2002. Poetry Foundation.

Summary

“Sleeping with the Dictionary” is a prose poem in a single with 10-sentence stanza. The first-person speaker uses many puns that connect reading and romantic activities. The poem appears fully justified (with all lines beginning and ending on the margin) in the printed version, and left-justified on Poetry Foundation and other online sources.

In the first two sentences, the speaker introduces a companion—the dictionary. She argues with the book, highlighting its mouth. The dictionary is intelligent, experienced, and adaptable. It also enjoys the solitary reader.

The third sentence describes how, late at night, the dictionary occupies the space between being awake and asleep.

In the fourth and fifth sentences, the speaker takes the dictionary into bed. She includes descriptions of the book itself, highlighting its generous size and contents (definitions and syllable stresses). The speaker also describes the physical, nightly act of reading of dreamers and poets.

In the sixth sentence, the speaker details the positioning of the book and reader in bed, and how the reader enters the dictionary.

The seventh and eighth sentences offer potentials: things that might happen. The moments when the rules of language are ignored might become part of a list of symptoms. How the dictionary is structured—alphabetized—might cause hallucinations made of vocabulary.

The ninth sentence focuses on the pad of paper in the bedroom where the speaker can write down words. In the tenth and final sentence, the dreaming poet is able to decode the writing on the pad and see a lover’s name.