Regaining unconsciousness Poems

Harryette Romell Mullen

Book - 2025

"Harryette Mullen is one of contemporary poetry's most influential voices, for her inventive language play, keen wit, formal experimentation, and pointed critique of American culture. In Regaining Unconsciousness, her first new collection in twelve years, Mullen confronts the imminent dangers of our present to sound an alarm for our future, to wake us out of our complicity and despondency: Can we, even still, find our way to our unconscious selves, beyond our capacity to harm, subdue, and consume? In eleven taut sections written in the eleventh hour of our collective being, these poems address climate change, corporate greed, racist violence, artificial intelligence, the pollution of our oceans, individualism at the cost of mutual... wellness, and the consequences of not addressing these pressing issues. Mullen imagines, as we must, our apocalypse, and yet, in an astounding feat, she does so with playfulness and wry referentiality that make these poems surprisingly buoyant, funny, and readable. Our end may be inevitable, Mullen admits, but maybe we begin with gratitude"--

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Subjects
Genres
Poetry
Published
Minneapolis, Minnesota : Graywolf Press [2025]
Language
English
Main Author
Harryette Romell Mullen (author)
Physical Description
143 pages ; 23 cm
ISBN
9781644453490
  • Was It a Dream?
  • Was It a Dream?
  • Always Aubade
  • Annunciation
  • Beggar's Blanket
  • As I Wander Lonely in the Cloud
  • The Only Ones
  • Photo Op with Morpheus
  • Wake Up, Butterfly
  • The Wind Is Pink
  • Weathering Hate
  • No Flesh Unturned
  • Trip of the Tongue
  • How Can We Know the Dancer from the Dance?
  • Still Waiting
  • Transparenthetical
  • Iconoclast
  • The Wind Is Pink
  • Black History Minute
  • Forecast
  • Chilling Effect
  • A Hard Rain
  • Hidden Valley
  • Untranslatable Ice
  • Bespoke
  • Dark Pattern
  • Bomb Cyclone
  • Havana Syndrome
  • Holy Word
  • Chilling Effect
  • Colorless Green Ideas
  • Natural History
  • Sharknado
  • Leopard Coat Spotted at Polka Dance
  • Chili Today, Hot Tamale
  • Colorless Green Ideas
  • Atmospheric River
  • Never Touch the Hair of a Goddess
  • LUVTOFU
  • Screenplay
  • Pen Name
  • Seasons in Hell
  • Seasons in Hell
  • How Do You Know the Sky Is Falling?
  • Hotter Than July
  • Please Don't Blow Your Top
  • I Never Said
  • Inclement Weather
  • Beach Banquet
  • Tequila Sunset
  • Goner
  • Paradise on Fire
  • Regaining Unconsciousness
  • Now's Not the Time for Your Tears
  • Departed
  • Public Health
  • Conversation in Isolation
  • Now's Not the Time for Your Tears
  • Sonnets Composed on Loo Roll
  • Brain Fog
  • Shot in the Arm
  • Our Song of Love
  • Returning
  • The Gap
  • The Gap
  • Duet
  • Land of the Discount Price, Home of the Brand Name
  • The Medium Is a Masseuse
  • Wolves vs. Cougars
  • Pink Gun, Pink Camo
  • How Can I Prove I'm Not a Robot?
  • Polar Vortex
  • Reality Programming
  • Weathering Steel
  • What Draws Us Together
  • Executive Function
  • In a Nutshell
  • Chatter Box
  • Executive Function
  • Spam for President
  • Sounds That Dog Can't Hear
  • White Rhinos
  • Laser Focus
  • Derecho
  • Breaking News
  • Concrete Steps
  • White Collar
  • Damage
  • Mermaid of Palmares
  • Deep and Wide
  • Mermaid of Palmares
  • Fan Mail from Some Flounder?
  • Drinking Mojitos in Cuba Libre
  • El Malecón
  • Spin Cycle
  • Auto Tune
  • Commedia dell'Arte
  • Pineapple Express
  • Killer Whale
  • Hero vs. Common Fate
  • Hero vs. Common Fate
  • I Refuse to Answer None of Your Questions
  • Approaching the Pinnacle
  • Metaphor Bags for Women
  • Duck Rabbit
  • Irreversible You
  • Something Like If
  • Poetry Porkchop
  • Life as a Gringo
  • The Green Knight Returns
  • Final Flicker of Life's Ember
  • Indoor-Outdoor Living
  • At Water's Edge
  • Arroyo Seco
  • Mouthful
  • On a Lark's Wing
  • Somewhere Someone
  • I Thought About You Too
  • Hopeful Noise
  • Indoor-Outdoor Living
  • Implications
  • Thanks to
  • Acknowledgments
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Mullen's striking latest, her first collection since 2013's Urban Tumbleweed, interrogates an increasingly online world with a keen eye for the eerie. "As I Wander Lonely in the Cloud" opens with the line "Smart machines armed with proprietary algorithms remain attentive to my wishes." The book inhabits a dystopian landscape in which "a computer-generated tempest agitates the Pacific," reminding readers of the inextricable relationship between technology and climate disaster. Even against the backdrop of a crumbling planet, the images are dazzling: "On your way to the end of the earth, you cruise the garish boulevard blinged out with glittering rhinestones." Mullen's poems are surprising and idiosyncratic; readers encounter robot spouses, billionaires sent to space in capsules, and an AI chatbot. The pandemic casts a shadow as the speaker sifts through a disconnected world in search of community. Ultimately, the collection celebrates human connection and spirit: "you who have been/ a creeping crawling thing,/ awake, take flight." This wildly imaginative work speaks to the present times with a powerful urgency. (Aug.)

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