Dim Lady

Mullen’s “Dim Lady” is an unconventional love poem modeled superficially on the poetic form of a sonnet. Sonnets are 14-line poems that typically follow a rigid pattern of meter and rhyme and are often passionately amorous in theme. They also often feature a volta—a point when the speaker’s voice turns and changes the subject in a noticeably dramatic way.

“Dim Lady” does not follow all the conventions of a sonnet. Although “Dim Lady” features several rhymes, it has no rhyme scheme; its form is closer to a prose poem than to a metered poem. The poem’s strategic and emphatic use of language, and its rejection of a recognizable poetic form, are characteristic of the Language school of poetry. Mullen’s identification with the Language school is also important when considering the roles of the reader and the writer of the poem. Language poets insist that readers take the opportunity to make their own meanings out of the poems they read; readers are not passive recipients of the writer’s poetic messages, but the real authorities on the topic at hand. This role reversal reveals Mullen’s feminist perspective on the social constructions of female identity, as it subverts the masculine poetic traditions that underpin the Petrarchan sonnet form specifically and Western love poetry in general.

Some features of “Dim Lady” are consistent with the sonnet form—for instance, its subject matter of love. The speaker’s treatment of love, however, is sardonic and light-hearted, parodying the earnest, highly emotional language of traditional sonnets. “Dim Lady” also contains a volta: the first nine and a half lines list her beloved’s shortcomings, but the end of Line 10 signals a shift with the phrase “And yet, by gosh” (Line 10). Here, the speaker adopts a less comic manner that is more tender in its authenticity.

The speaker of “Dim Lady” avoids lyrical language in the poem. Instead, the speaker refers to the characteristics of her beloved “honeybunch” (Line 1) in slangy, casual, and purposefully deflating language. We hear unromantic colloquialisms allude to the beloved’s “racks” (Line 3), her “kisser” (Line 2), “noggin” (Line 4), and “mug” (Line 6). These lead up to the speaker’s use of the slang phrase “ball and chain” (Line 10), a term many people find offensive and sexist when used as a descriptor of one’s romantic partner for its association with prison and its burdensome tone.

Likewise, the speaker’s similes reference prosaic contemporary objects and brand names, further undercutting established and predictable notions of romance and love. The humorous and idiosyncratic diction both enacts and parodies authenticity and folksiness, while also sending up the ubiquity of consumer culture in the American imagination. For example, the speaker can only summon up the color white as a feature of “Liquid Paper” (Line 2), a brand name of correction fluid, while sex appeal is akin to Twinkies.

The deliberate use of humdrum metaphors like “table- / cloths in Shakey’s pizza parlors” (Lines 4-5) is a darkly comical take on American commercial banalities. By elevating brand names to the level of literature, Mullen is on the one hand simultaneously universalizing poetry, love, and the experience of romantic idealism. On the other hand, however, the poem asks whether we have degraded language and culture to some degree when our only referents come from advertising.

Because Mullen is interested in matters of race and politics, there is analytical potential in her use of color imagery throughout the poem. Whiteness is emphasized at several points, which contrasts with the darker physical features of Shakespeare’s exoticized Dark Lady, to whom he addresses Sonnet 130 as well as other love sonnets. Mullen’s “Dim Lady,” as the title suggests, is neither dark-featured nor exotic in appearance; rather, she is unremarkably pale, a complexion that is ridiculed, perhaps lovingly, by the comparisons to American products and brands discussed above. The absence of an obvious critique of race relations in the poem is noticeable, as if Mullen is choosing to emphasize the broader human experience of love and consumerism in this poem and not the tension between the Black and white experience. Also noticeable is the poem’s focus on the physical body of a white woman, an American media trend that has invited criticism and scrutiny for its exclusion of Black and brown-skinned female counterparts.