Poet Lisel Mueller was born in Hamburg, Germany, in 1924. She and her family fled Nazi persecution, arriving in the US in 1939. Her serious writing of poetry began in 1953, after the death of her mother.
Over the years, Mueller published seven books of poetry, several volumes of translation and a book of essays. In 1981, she won the National Book Award for Poetry for her collection The Need to Hold Still, and in 1997 she was the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for Alive Together, a collection representing 35 years of her work. Among her other awards are the Lamont Poetry Selection, the Carl Sandburg Award, the Illinois Poet Laureate Award and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. She has taught writing at Goddard College and the University of Chicago.
Most Famous Works
The Private Life (1975)
The Need to Hold Still (1980)
Learning to Play by Ear (1990)
Alive Together: New & Selected Poems (1996)
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