Reading Affect in Harryette Mullen's S*PeRM**K*T

Abstract

© 2021 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System he first poem in Harryette Mullen’s S*PeRM**K*T (1992) describes the supermarket of its provocative title: “Individually wrapped singles, frozen divorced compartments, six-pack widows all express themselves while women wait in family ways, all bulging baskets, squirming young” (Recyclopedia 65).1 Throughout, S*PeRM**K*T exposes advertising’s manipulative acts of “hailing” through such punning détournements of racist and sexist marketing jingles. Scholarship on the volume has largely focused on these skillful and scathing critiques, yet another passage in the same poem reads, “Align your list or listlessness” (65). Punning on “grocery list” and the emotional state of “listlessness,” this line juxtaposes the intention represented by “list” with the feelings of ennui and distraction associated with “listlessness.” The shopper with a list is at least marginally self-directed and in control, while the shopper without one is not only “list-less,” but “listless,” sluggish and languidly indifferent.2 Attentive to how