Friday, July 21, 2017

Poetry of Lisel Mueller

On Monday evening we take up four poems by the modern American poet Lisel Mueller: "Joy," "The Power of Music to Disturb," "Immortality," and "Into Space."

She was born Lisel Neumann in 1924 in Hamburg, Germany, and emigrated with her family to the United States in 1939.  In a PBS interview, Mueller stated, "By the time I started writing, English was almost like a first language for me.  I never wrote in German.  This gave me an advantage .... it made me more conscious."  

Mueller won the Pulitzer Prize in 1997 for her volume of new and collected poems, Alive Together.  Read the interview she gave the NewsHour after the announcement of the prize here.

Join us on Monday evening!