Dependencies

by Lisel Mueller

"Dependencies" is a collection of early work from a nationally renowned poet. In her perceptive debut collection, originally published in 1965 and long out of print, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Lisel Mueller reveals the immense talent that would later bring her the highest literary honors.

Genres: Poetry

64 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1998

About the author

Poet and translator Lisel Mueller was born in Hamburg, Germany in 1924. The daughter of teachers, her family was forced to flee the Nazi regime when Mueller was 15. They immigrated to the US and settled in the Mid-west. Mueller attended the University of Evansville, where her father was a professor, 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 (1990).

(from Poetry Foundation)

Reviews

[Kasandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Though she won a Pulitzer, I'd never heard of Mueller before I found this book on the clearance table at the store. This is the most amazing poetry I've come across in a while, though this debut book was written in 1965. Almost every poem seems to require at least one re-reading. One poem is clearly influenced by Millay and done in such a dead-on imitation of her voice that it practically out-Millays her. I'll have to seek out more of her work. Excellently crafted and jealousy-inducing. Awesome stuff.