Harryette Mullen
â€œHarryette Mullen is a magician of words, phrases, and songs . . . No voice in contemporary poetry is quite as original, cosmopolitan, witty, and tragic.â€ â€”Susan Stewart, citation for the Academy of American Poets Fellowship,Urban tumbleweed, some people call it,,discarded plastic bag we see in every city,blown down the street with vagrant wind.,Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  â€”from ,Urban Tumbleweed,Urban Tumbleweed, is theÂ poet Harryette Mullenâ€™s exploration of spaces where the city and the natural world collide. Written out of a daily practice of walking, Mullenâ€™s stanzas adapt the traditional Japanese tanka, a poetic form suited for recording fleeting impressions, describing environmental transitions, and contemplating the human beingâ€™s place in the natural world. But, as she writes in her preface, â€œWhat is natural about being human? What to make of a city dweller taking a â€˜nature walkâ€™ in a public park while listening to a podcast with ear-bud headphones?â€
Poetry,Environment,Geography,Cities
Urban Tumbleweed: Notes from a Tanka Diary