Dim Lady

Language poetry is a literary movement that originated in diverse communities of San Francisco and New York in the 1960s and 1970s. Its focus on method and craft can be traced back to the modernist movement. Mullen’s “Dim Lady” is an example of Language poetry that contains poetic language that has been broken up unexpectedly; as a parody of Shakespeare’s sonnet 130, “Dim Lady” contains suggestions of Shakespeare’s original poem, and these fragments work together with Mullen’s language-focused use of contemporary dialect to create a completely unique poem.

Mullen’s identification with the Language school of poetry signals that she has moved away from established American poetic traditions in order to establish her own art form and style. Language poets are unique because they invite the reader in a deliberate way to look at how the language of poetry contributes to the meaning of the poem. For Language poets, the reader’s role in drawing out the meaning of a poem is the focus, and the roles of the speaker and the writer of the poem are minimized. This role reversal emphasizes the belief of Language poets that language leads to meaning, rather than the other way around.

Though Language poetry as a school is not linked with feminism in a direct way, the emphasis on the reader’s power to make meaning suggests a feminist leaning. For much of Western literary history, male writers have dominated and determined the conventions of poetry and prose. The writers of the Western literary canon, for example, are mostly men, and the centering of their work has strongly shaped the role, the image, and the content of high literary culture. Language poets take the power away from the voices that create the literature and give the power to the recipient, or the reader. When this concept is applied to literary gender dynamics, the result can imply a feminist slant on traditionally male-centered performances of language.