Lisel Mueller
Who is Lisel Mueller
Lisel Mueller (born Elisabeth Neumann, February 8, 1924 – February 21, 2020) was a German-born American poet, translator and academic teacher. Her family fled the Nazi regime, and she arrived in the U.S. in 1939 at the age of 15. She worked as a literary critic and taught at the University of Chicago, Elmhurst College and Goddard College. She began writing poetry in the 1950s and published her first collection in 1965, after years of self-study. She received awards including the National Book Award in 1981 and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1997, as the only German-born poet awarded that prize.
Life and career
Mueller was born Elisabeth Neumann in Hamburg. Her father, Fritz C. Neumann, was a high school teacher at the Gymnasium Alstertal. A progressive educator...
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Lisel Mueller Poems
- Reading The Brothers Grimm To Jenny
Jenny, your mind commands
kingdoms of black and white:
you shoulder the crow on your left,
the snowbird on your right;
...
- Scenic Route
For Lucy, who called them "ghost houses."
Someone was always leaving
...
- Another Version
Our trees are aspens, but people
mistake them for birches;
they think of us as characters
in a Russian novel, Kitty and Levin
...
- The Laughter Of Women
The laughter of women sets fire
to the Halls of Injustice
and the false evidence burns
to a beautiful white lightness
...
- Bedtime Story
The moon lies on the river
like a drop of oil.
The children come to the banks to be healed
of their wounds and bruises.
...
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Lisel Mueller Quotes
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Comments about Lisel Mueller
- Danielc87173381: revisiting lisel mueller's 'o brave new world' this predawn because it is beautiful and precisely because it is 'relevant' to nothing in my cluttered head or delinquent lust.
- Bashargi: “what exists, exists so that it can be lost and become precious,”~ lisel mueller
- Aliner: good morning from lisel mueller's "imaginary paintings"...
- Mosestamakloe: memory is the only
afterlife i can understand.
—lisel mueller, 1996
- Cjsarett: lisel mueller, “bach transcribing vivaldi” — “the other imagined twilight, the setting in blood/and a valley of fallen leaves where a stranger might rest.”
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