Reviews of Recyclopedia

“Mullen’s infectious linguistic torques can entrance readers.”—The Village Voice

“In her previous four collections, Harryette Mullen’s influences have ranged from language poetry to the rhythms and playfulness of the black vernacular…. Suffused with both politics and literary theory, Mullen’s language refuses to be weighed down by either.”—New York Times Book Review

“[Harryette Mullen] is a woman at play but refusing to be played, managing to get Sapho and “juicy fruit” into a single poem with out it ending up pastiche or anachronistic.”—Bookforum

“Linguistic experiment has rarely sounded so bluesy and cool.”—Publishers Weekly

“Recyclopedia invites us to consider [Mullen’s] three books not as successive chapters of a poet’s career but as a simultaneity of language, a replicable and mutable Big Bang of thematic, linguistic, syntactic, and formal combination.” —Boston Review

“In restoring these collections to print, Graywolf Press has given readers and critics a new opportunity to consider how much Mullen has accomplished in fusing and retrofitting the scope of both prose poem and lyric … [Mullen’s] poems exploit the confined space, uncoil within it, creating a kind of centripetal tension that threatens to turn the form inside out.” —American Book Review

“Mullen’s is a stunningly lyrical voice, rich and resonant, engaged and engaging.”—Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

“Readers can track the evolving process of this poet’s craft. And it is an evolution.”—Library Journal

“Hip hyperbole, thy queen is Ms. Mullen. Word Rules. Harryette hype hip-hops and bops the taut poetry trapeze. Makes me want to marimba. Makes me want to riff when I raff. To always write write."—Sandra Cisneros

“Surprising, even thrilling.” —Rebecca Meacham, Women’s Review of Books