Subject

Laura Mullen teaches at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge. Her first collection of poems, The Surface (1991), was chosen as a National Poetry Series selection; her second collection, After I Was Dead (1999), was selected for the University of Georgia Press Contemporary Poetry Series. She is also the author of The Tales of Horror (Kelsey Street Press, 1999).

• Acknowledgments Wake Circles Apropos Late & Soon Gift Frames Lying in It Model Train Glaces a Repetition Refuge Tune Intention Tremor Three Arrangement Flowers Formed of Needles Plans Story for Reproduction Shock Context Postures The Squeaky Wheel Circles Cataract Translation Series Old Pond Arose (Read As) A Sound Subject Matter Empty White Devices Applications Of (Among) The Accomplice's Accomplishments Railroad History (Practice Text) See Assembly The Distance (This) Context & Subtexts

"To write today in English means using an idiom that is hegemonic, 'globalized,' no longer national. Vacated. A human, though, is necessarily sited, and here we find Mullen's Subject. Its movement open to both '(gone) and suture,' it grasps an anxiety in American speech too often covered over by Americans, though it's visible in the world. To cite Agamben: 'the ethical subject is a subject that bears witness to a desubjectivization.' Mullen's 'subject' is not one of triumphalism; it articulates the 'no-one,' ninguen, the 'not-even-who' that generates being's fibre, its viscosity, presence. In Mullen, 'Belonging to a body/To itself unrecognizable' is followed by 'Open the doors. Here.' Her 'here' is poetry that American English needs." - Erin Moure"