Harryette Mullen’s two most recently published books of poetry demonstrate differing approaches to identity, ethnicity, and multiculturalism. The first is entitled Blues Baby: Early Poems (2002), which reprints her first book, Tree Tall Woman, from 1981, along with a selection of uncollected early poems. The second is Sleeping with the Dictionary (2002a). The changes in Mullen’s poetry—in terms of form and content—should immediately be obvious to most readers of the two books. Blues Baby is in many respects a more “conventional” book of poems than Sleeping with the Dictionary, whether this applies to the form of individual poems or the structure of the book as a whole. But instead of using these books to argue for a fixed progression in Mullen’s poetics, or what upon cursory inspection seems to be an increasing sophistication in her poetic practice, it may be more useful to evaluate the differing formal strategies and ideological concerns contained in each.