Skip to main content
book cover for Regaining Unconsciousness

Regaining Unconsciousness

Poems

You must sign in to see if this title is available for request. Sign In or Register Now

Send NetGalley books directly to your Kindle or Kindle app

1
To read on a Kindle or Kindle app, please add kindle@netgalley.com as an approved email address to receive files in your Amazon account. Click here for step-by-step instructions.
2
Also find your Kindle email address within your Amazon account, and enter it here.
Pub Date Aug 05 2025 | Archive Date Jul 31 2025

Talking about this book? Use #RegainingUnconsciousness #NetGalley. More hashtag tips!


Description

Only legendary poet Harryette Mullen could make a book of our time’s dire crises this much fun to read

Harryette Mullen is one of contemporary poetry’s most influential voices, for her inventive language play, keen wit, formal experimentation, and pointed critique of American culture. In Regaining Unconsciousness, her first new collection in twelve years, Mullen confronts the imminent dangers of our present to sound an alarm for our future, to wake us out of our complicity and despondency: Can we, even still, find our way to our unconscious selves, beyond our capacity to harm, subdue, and consume?

In eleven taut sections written in the eleventh hour of our collective being, these poems address climate change, corporate greed, racist violence, artificial intelligence, the pollution of our oceans, individualism at the cost of mutual wellness, and the consequences of not addressing these pressing issues. Mullen imagines, as we must, our apocalypse, and yet, in an astounding feat, she does so with playfulness and wry referentiality that make these poems surprisingly buoyant, funny, and readable. Our end may be inevitable, Mullen admits, but maybe we begin with gratitude.

Only legendary poet Harryette Mullen could make a book of our time’s dire crises this much fun to read

Harryette Mullen is one of contemporary poetry’s most influential voices, for her inventive...


Advance Praise

“This wildly imaginative work speaks to the present times with a powerful urgency.”Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Regaining Unconsciousness is just the poetry collection we need for an unstable, unpredictable world. Harryette Mullen treats us to a characteristically rich feast of sonic surprises and wicked wordplay . . . but be forewarned: some of these poems have ‘pointy teeth’ and real bite.”—Evie Shockley

“Harryette Mullen, lexical genius she is, still ain’t playing even when she plays, ears attuned to ruin’s rubato, eyes on a burning city on a burning world. And she is unamused.”—Douglas Kearney

“One of our most influential poets, Harryette Mullen is an American original, as indispensable as she is uncompromising, whose cold comforts offer a bracing antidote to these overheated times.”—Monica Youn

Regaining Unconsciousness unfolds like wisdoms written on the walls of a maze of mirrors. . . . No poet is more mercurial while frank, more understated while exacting, or more enlightened while inquisitive. This book is every bit as virtuosic and singular as the great Harryette Mullen.”—Terrance Hayes


“This wildly imaginative work speaks to the present times with a powerful urgency.”Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Regaining Unconsciousness is just the poetry collection we need for an unstable...


Marketing Plan

National media outreach

Author events in New York and San Francisco

Bookseller outreach campaign

Academic and library marketing

Targeted digital advertising

Social media promotion

National media outreach

Author events in New York and San Francisco

Bookseller outreach campaign

Academic and library marketing

Targeted digital advertising

Social media promotion


Available Editions

EDITION Paperback
ISBN 9781644453490
PRICE $18.00 (USD)
PAGES 160

Available on NetGalley

NetGalley Reader (PDF)
NetGalley Shelf App (PDF)
Send to Kindle (PDF)
Download (PDF)