Mullen's Call for the Reinterpretation of Language

In Haryette Mullen's collection, self-consciously titled, "Sleeping with the Dictionary" our convictions about language and its use as a poetic device are transformed and recast. Mullen works to break up the connections made through words and investigate their use and power. Perhaps drawing from her African American heritage and the vernacular, Mullen is able to piece apart the hierarchy of language to find a greater meaning in its dissolution and reinterpretation.
One manner in which Mullen reinterprets language is the prose poem. As prose poems by their nature question the power of poetic verse, Mullen utilizes their ability to harness the power of natural speech and play with its presence in poetry. Her poem "Bleeding Hearts" emphasizes this inherent beauty of prose:

This
ramshackle stack of shotguns I'm holding in my scope. I'm
beady-eyed as a bug. Slippery as a sardine. Salty as a kipper.
You could rehash me for breakfast. Find my shrinking awe, or
share your wink. I'll get a rash wench.

Thus even in a form such as prose assonance, alliteration and cacophony still abound. Mullen continues this dialogue with the inherent beauty of speech in "Wino Rhino," "My heart quivers as arrows on street maps target/ me for urban renewal."
In addition to her work with prose, Mullen digs deeper into her dissolution of poetic connectivity with language. While the prose poem confronts the existence of language in poetry, her further "elliptical" movement seeks to confront our convictions of language itself. Her poem, conveniently titled, "Elliptical" attacks this connection by deleting words and replacing them with ellipses.

They just cant seem too...They should try harder to...They
ought to be more...We all wish they weren't so...

Therefore through this omission Mullen parallels the fact that language is inherently elliptical, that meaning is never as concrete as it seems. We have no idea what words should go in those spaces. Thus it is the poet's power to create which gives poetry its beauty. Mullen's poem "Coo/Slur" follows this discussion over the connection of language, here moving to connection so basic as the linking of letters to form words, "da red/ yell ow/ bro won t/ an orange you/ bay jaun/ pure people."
Moreover, Mullen shows that in today's world of entropy we cannot be certain of the suspicious connection between words and letters. Thus in a method of beauty and play, Mullen breaks down our assumptions to the roots of what is poetically essential.