Harryette Mullen, Her Silver-Tongued Companion

With Her Silver Tongued Companion, we are gifted the most complete critical edition to date of one of our greatest poets. Never-before-seen unpublished work in conversation with new critical writings and beloved collections is a crucial advancement of scholarship in contemporary poetry. Harryette Mullen’s work opens a space for infinite readings and readerships, interrogating the notion of a single audience; as she has stated, "I write for myself and others. An other is anyone who is not me. Anyone who is not me is like me in some ways and unlike me in other ways. I write, optimistically, for an imagined audience of known and unknown readers." Mullen’s poems insist that Blackness and the avant-garde are inextricable; her commitment to formal innovation, sonic virtuosity, intertextuality, and her utilization of techniques from many important poetry movements (Oulipo, Language Poetry, Feminist Poetry) makes her a singular figure in American literature. With the breadth of work represented in these pages, we can finally see the artistic trajectory of a decades-long career accompanied by the critical inquiry it deserves. This is an essential collection for both lifelong readers of Mullen and those new to her exhilarating work. -- Claudia Rankine, author of Just Us: An American Conversation and Citizen: An American Lyric