Sleeping with the Dictionary

“Sleeping with the Dictionary” contains no line breaks. It is a one-stanza prose poem with ten sentences. The first-person speaker uses double entendre—a play on words that usually has a subtly sexual suggested meaning—and puns to create multiple levels of meaning in the poem: One level is the speaker physically reading the dictionary in bed, while the other level implies a sexual relationship.

In the first sentence, the speaker introduces her “companion.” After identifying herself, “I,” she highlights the first syllable of “dictionary” with another word that shares the same first syllable: “dicker.” Both these words sonically reveal the sexual meaning—throughout the poem “dictionary” refers to a “companion” who has a dick. The dictionary is also anthropomorphized (made to appear human) as having another organ used for sexual activity—a mouth. It is “silver-tongued” and has “lips.” The speaker refers to these lips meeting her own gloss, which carries the pun of lip gloss and glossing over—skimming—a text.

The second sentence continues the description of the dictionary. Listed qualities include “versatile,” “conversant,” “well-versed,” and “not adverse,” which all contain “vers[e],” or poetry. In other words, the dictionary contains poetry. These words also refer to a lover, further linking poetry and sex. Both poetry and oral sex can be described as a “verbal art,” or one that involves the mouth. Here, verb contains some of the same letters as verse— “ver” —highlighting the role of the verb in both poetry and sex. Meanwhile, the poem’s speaker, or “reader,” is described as having “solitary habits.” This characterizes the dictionary as a kind of pornography one uses in masturbatory acts.

The third sentence is about time and contrasts. The speaker’s “insomnia” happens late at night, when it is “dark.” While this dark time can be seen on a clock, there is also liminality, or time-between-times. The dictionary, or “language” more generally, offers a “hypnagogic trance”: Hypnagogic refers to the time between being awake and sleeping. The speaker echoes this liminal space in contrasting descriptions of the dictionary as a “stimulating sedative.” The act of reading is compared to the act of sex in that both often happen in bed, occupying the space between waking and sleeping.

The fourth sentence is longer than the other sentences in the poem. Before the em-dash is a list of actions, including descriptions of the objects with which the speaker interacts. The gerunds—verbs that end in “-ing” and become nouns in the list—open up who is receiving the actions. In other words, “retiring,” “turning,” “taking,” “clutching,” and “smoothing,” are actions done to bedroom furniture on one level of meaning. However, the sentence structure and double entendre at play here allow the actions to refer to another person, thus describing the act of having sex, as well as the act of reading the dictionary in bed.

While the bedroom furniture, such as the lamp and the bed, is not detailed, the speaker repeatedly notes the enormous size of the dictionary in the fourth sentence. Puns allow the speaker to simultaneously talk about features of the bed and the book: “[C]overs” and “sheets” refer to parts of both bedding and books. After the em-dash, the speaker categorizes the listed actions as “exercises in the conscious regimen of dreamers.” In other words, the list is a sleep routine. The dreamers are also defined as readers: people who are “turning illuminated pages.” This returns to the idea of the dictionary as pornographic, linking manuscripts of the middle ages—that occasionally had pictures of sexual organs drawn by monks (illuminations)—with modern publications consisting of mostly nude pictures.

The fifth sentence develops the definition of the listed actions. The actions above, as well as the gerund “groping,” are “motions and procedures” that a poet must go through in their “nocturnal mission.” Again, Mullen’s use of double entendre allows the actions to refer to “groping” for both a word and what people do with one another in bed. Furthermore, the phrase “nocturnal mission” is a play on the phrase “nocturnal emission,” or wet dream.

In the sixth sentence, puns are combined with alliteration, or the repetition of the first letter in successive words. Mullen uses alliteration throughout the poem; in this sentence, the letter “p” is repeated in the words “possibilities,” “perverse positions,” “practice,” and “penetration.” Alliteration mimics the structure of the dictionary, alphabetized by first letter. These words also have multiple meanings that apply to both reading and to sex. For instance, words can be positioned in relation to one another, and bodies in coitus are positioned in a specific way. Both bodies and minds become “aroused.”

The seventh sentence introduces another kind of dictionary and a possibility: If someone “exit[s] the logic of language,” they “might” be classified by a symptomatic dictionary. Losing the power of speech is a symptom of several different disorders. This speaks to how lust and love are often considered synonymous with being crazy, or out of one’s mind. It also may allude to the speechless which transpires during orgasm.

In the eighth sentence, the language of possibility continues. The “alphabetical order” of the dictionary “might” cause “lucid hallucinations.” This harkens to the “hypnagogic trance” in the third sentence, developing the idea of being between states of consciousness in lucid dreaming. The eighth sentence also recalls the symptoms of the seventh sentence, developing the idea of insanity.

The ninth sentence introduces another object—a pad of paper. This “pad” lies “beside the bed,” presumably near the “bedside light” from the fourth sentence. It is present to “record” words that migrate from the dictionary. The speaker is absent from the sentence, creating a feeling of the words moving on their own accord, building upon the idea of hallucination.

In the tenth and final sentence, the speaker reaches deep sleep. Deep sleep is indicated by REM, or “rapid eye movement,” and is when dreams occur. In these dreams, the “poet” can “decode” what is written on the pad. This is compared to an “acrostic of a lover’s name,” closing the poem with an explicit reference to what has been hinted at throughout the poem—a lover.