Keynote
Only legendary poet Harryette Mullen could make a book of our time’s dire crises this much fun to read
As you plan your last meal, chunks of ancient glaciers are ice cubes melting in a bowl of steaming broth. If, in a season of superlatives, you survive the hottest month on record in the hottest summer of the hottest year in the hottest decade ever, you’ll want a cold shower and a sip of chilled champagne.
—from “Hotter Than July”
“[Mullen’s] love of the lexicon, of paradox, of nonsense recalls Emily Dickinson, Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear. . . . Her poems are multivoiced and packed with allusions ranging from the literary canon to pop culture. It is out of this ‘jagged mosaic,’ powered by a prodigious capacity for invention, that she constructs her own ‘masterpiece of mayhem.’”—Lorna Knowles Blake, The Hudson Review