April is National Poetry Month in the US, and this year I want to acknowledge the work of the German-American poet Lisel Mueller. Born in Hamburg in 1924, Lisel Neumann's family escaped certain death by the Nazis (her grandparents perished in the death camps) by fleeing to the United States. Lisel was 15 when she arrived on our shores. Her poems are in her adopted English and they often reflect a whimsical relationship with a second language. She writes with an intimate precision about her own life, but also finds inspiration in the lives of artists and writers, as well as in the midwestern landscape of her home in America. Mueller's poems are accessible to a wide audience, but also possess layers of meaning that call for frequent re-reading and reflection.
Lisel Mueller has always kept a strong bond with her native German language, and has translated into English the works of German women writers, especially the poetry of Marie Luise Kaschnitz. To my knowlegde, she is all but unknown in Germany, and none of her poems have appeared in German translation.
Lisel Mueller won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1997 for her collection Alive Together: New and Selected Poems.
In the poem Curriculum Vitae, Lisel Mueller gives a brief sketch of her life, including how English became the "language of love" through the courtship with her future husband and how she was "hurt" into becoming a poet to express her grief after the death of her mother.
Curriculum Vitae
1) I was born in a Free City, near the North Sea.
2) In the year of my birth, money was shredded into
confetti. A loaf of bread cost a million marks. Of
course I do not remember this.
3) Parents and grandparents hovered around me. The
world I lived in had a soft voice and no claws.
4) A cornucopia filled with treats took me into a building
with bells. A wide-bosomed teacher took me in.
5) At home the bookshelves connected heaven and earth.
6) On Sundays the city child waded through pinecones
and primrose marshes, a short train ride away.
7) My country was struck by history more deadly than
earthquakes or hurricanes.
8) My father was busy eluding the monsters. My mother
told me the walls had ears. I learned the burden of secrets.
9) I moved into the too bright days, the too dark nights
of adolescence.
10) Two parents, two daughters, we followed the sun
and the moon across the ocean. My grandparents stayed
behind in darkness.
11) In the new language everyone spoke too fast. Eventually
I caught up with them.
12) When I met you, the new language became the language
of love.
13) The death of the mother hurt the daughter into poetry.
The daughter became a mother of daughters.
14) Ordinary life: the plenty and thick of it. Knots tying
threads to everywhere. The past pushed away, the future left
unimagined for the sake of the glorious, difficult, passionate
present.
15) Years and years of this.
16) The children no longer children. An old man's pain, an
old man's loneliness.
17) And then my father too disappeared.
18) I tried to go home again. I stood at the door to my
childhood, but it was closed to the public.
19) One day, on a crowded elevator, everyone's face was younger
than mine.
20) So far, so good. The brilliant days and nights are
breathless in their hurry. We follow, you and I.
Hi,
I am very interested in Ms Mueller's poam "Alive Together" and woul like to understand it more. Would you please let me know who she refers when she talks about an unknown woman crying for her husband exchanged for a mule. I am confused about the expression she uses.
Thank you and Regards,
Fatima
Posted by: fatima | February 20, 2012 at 04:15 PM
She is referring to a slave woman in the American south, forced to sleep with the Master while her husband and daughter are sold off as chattel goods.
Posted by: David | February 20, 2012 at 04:40 PM