Sleeping with the Dictionary

The night is a central motif in “Sleeping with the Dictionary.” While the night is characterized as “dark” enough to need to turn on a “bedside light” in order to read, it is not a frightening darkness. Rather, the darkness is a place where a sexual, or “nightly,” act can occur. The darkness provides space to be uninhibited—to feel free to act on erotic desires. Furthermore, the erotic acts that take place before sleep grant the poet a kind of “night vision” allowing them to turn words into poetry. Night and darkness are linked not only to sex and dreaming, but also to poetic craft.

Another motif in Mullen’s poem is the fixation on size: The speaker is a size queen, per say. There are a number of adjectives that refer to the generous size of the dictionary: “big,” “heavy,” and “thick.” These words are also commonly used when referring to large male sexual organs. Double entendre causes the words to refer to both “dick” and “dictionary.” This motif is developed by including a more stereotypically feminine word that relates to size: “ample.” Ample frequently refers to a woman’s bosom, but Mullen uses it before “block of knowledge”: the dictionary.