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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Top 10 most used topics by Lisel Mueller

White 8 World 8 Life 7 Long 6 Sun 6 Speak 5 Child 5 Moon 5 Children 5 Face 5


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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Poem of the day

Edgar Albert Guest Poem
The Killing Place
 by Edgar Albert Guest

We're hiking along at a two-forty pace
We 're making life seem like a man-killing race,
With our nerves all on edge and our jaws firmly set
We go rushing along; with our brows lined with sweat
And our cheeks pale and drawn every minute we dash,
And the goal that we 're after is merely more cash.

We 're out for the money, the greenbacks and gold,
...

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