MM Book Club Discussion: "Sleeping with the Dictionary" (August 2026)

Here's where to discuss this month's choice from the "Poetry, for those who don't read poetry" shelf

Welcome to the Discussion Page for “Sleeping with the Dictionary” by Harryette Mullen, an acclaimed Black American female poet and English professor at UCLA. This is one of our five options to read for the MM Book Club in August 2026.

To learn more about the club, where to get your books and more, go to the official book club launch page. Learn about the rules for commenting, and get the links to the discussion pages for the other titles on this month’s Book Club Hub.

Poetry, for those those Who Don’t Read Poetry Shelf
”Sleeping with the Dictionary“ by Harryette Mullen
This book takes the language used to manipulate us, from advertisements to government doublespeak to fairy tales, and just tears it apart. Puns, slang, broken spelling. She shows you how “proper” English is rigged to keep you from seeing what’s really going on. Some of these entries will make you laugh. Others will make your head spin and wonder. That’s OK, it’s the point. She wants you to look at words and consider what they truly mean. This slim book was a National Book Award finalist and she deserved it.

My thoughts and discussion starter (from Mike)

This is an odd little wonder of a book. She plays with puns, clichés, advertising slogans, government-speak and all the phrases we hear so often we’ve stopped listening to them.

Some poems are funny. Some are sharp. Some may make you wonder if you accidentally skipped a page containing the instructions. I’m not entirely sure poetry is supposed to come with instructions, which may explain why some of us are afraid of it.

Mullen moves words around like letter tiles in Scrabble, slinging them back and forth along their wooden pew before she fits them back together, sometimes unexpectedly, to create something new. A perfectly ordinary phrase may get a slight twist and all of a sudden, you see what’s hiding underneath it, whether it’s race, sex, money or power.

A few questions to kick things off. On this first one, I’m genuinely curious. How many of you read poetry regularly? If you do, did Mullen’s experiments feel playful or exhausting, or generate some other feeling?

Then, I’m just as curious if you started this book and thought, “Why in the world did Michael recommend this?”

Which poems stayed with you? Which did you have to read more than once? Which made you laugh? Were there any you read and reread, yet still couldn’t make heads or tails of?

There are no wrong answers here. Unless you claim to have understood every word on the first reading. Then we may need to see some identification.

MM

** In order to have a troll-free, hate-free comments section — and because if there’s one thing I know about my crazy haters, they would rather let Karoline Leavitt explain the meaning of “truth” to them for six straight hours than give me $5 — my Comments section here on my Substack is limited to paid subscribers. However, free subscribers are still welcome to read all the comments.

And, not to worry, anyone can send me their comments, opinions and thoughts by writing to me at mike@michaelmoore.com. I read every one of them, though obviously I can’t respond to all. I also read the comments here on Substack, as do my producers.

Learn about the rules for commenting, and get the links to the discussion pages for the other titles on this month’s Book Club Hub.