Forms of Attention: Notes from Harryette Mullen's Tanka Diary

Harryette Mullen's Urban Tumbleweed: Notes from a Tanka Diary (2014) advances a quotidian archive of ephemera that brings into focus the convergence of ordinary affects, environment, and racial politics. This assemblage of 366 poems conceived as part of Mullen's daily walking practice also stresses the significance of race and racism to the genre of walk poem. Mullen's writing distills routine experiences, observations, and sensations into poetic forms, and her resulting collection illuminates environmental damage and systemic inequalities based on class and race, ultimately modeling how a sharpened awareness of body and place cultivates attention to broader social and ecological realities.