Profile
Photos
Comments
Hope
It hovers in dark corners
before the lights are turned on,
it shakes
sleep from its eyes
and drops from mushroom gills,
it explodes in the
starry heads
of dandelions turned sages,
it sticks to the wings of green
angels
that sail from the tops of maples.
It sprouts in each
occluded eye
of the many-eyed potato,
it lives in each earthworm
segment
surviving cruelty,
it is the motion that runs the tail of a
dog,
it is the mouth that inflates the lungs
of the child that has just
been born.
It hovers in dark corners
before the lights are turned on,
it shakes
sleep from its eyes
and drops from mushroom gills,
it explodes in the
starry heads
of dandelions turned sages,
it sticks to the wings of green
angels
that sail from the tops of maples.
It sprouts in each
occluded eye
of the many-eyed potato,
it lives in each earthworm
segment
surviving cruelty,
it is the motion that runs the tail of a
dog,
it is the mouth that inflates the lungs
of the child that has just
been born.
It is the singular
gift
we cannot destroy in ourselves,
the argument that refutes
death,
the genius that invents the future,
all we know of
God.
It is the serum which makes us swear
not to betray one
another;
it is in this poem, trying to speak.
~
Lisel Mueller ~
gift
we cannot destroy in ourselves,
the argument that refutes
death,
the genius that invents the future,
all we know of
God.
It is the serum which makes us swear
not to betray one
another;
it is in this poem, trying to speak.
~
Lisel Mueller ~
(Alive Together: New and
Selected Poems)
Selected Poems)
(Photograph by Toni
Holopainen)
Holopainen)
Lisel Mueller
(1924 -
)
Lisel Mueller was born in Hamburg, Germany in 1924. She has had acareer both writing poetry and translating. She attended the University
of Evansville and did her graduate study at Indiana University.
Her
collections of poetry include The Private Life, which was the 1975 Lamont Poetry Selection, Second Language (1986), The Need to Hold Still (1980), which received the National Book Award, Learning to Play by Ear (1990), and Alive Together: New & Selected Poems (1996),
which won the Pulitzer Prize.
Her other awards and honors include the
Carl Sandburg Award, the Helen Bullis Award, the Ruth Lilly Prize, and
a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. She has also published
translations, most recently Circe's Mountain by Marie Luise Kaschnitz in 1990.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lisel Mueller (b. February 8, 1924) is a prize-winning American poet.
She was born in Hamburg, Germany, in 1924 and immigrated to America at the age of 15. her father, Fritz Neumann, was a professor at Evansville College. Her mother died in 1953.[1] "Though my family landed in the Midwest, we lived in urban or suburban
environments," she once wrote. She and her husband, Paul Mueller (d.
2001) built a home in Lake Forest, Illinois in the 1960s, where they raised two daughters and lived for many years.
Lisel currently resides in a retirement community in Chicago. Lisel's
poems are extremely accessible, yet intricate and layered. While at
times whimsical and possessing a sly humor, there is an underlying
sadness in much of her work. [2] [3]
She graduated from the University of Evansville in 1944 and has taught at the University of Chicago, Elmhurst College in Illinois, and Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont.[1]
Mueller has written book reviews for the Chicago Daily News.
