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Waving from Shore: Poems
Poems deal with language, music, memory, mortality, silence, the night, and the past
- GenresPoetry
64 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1989
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77 people want to read
About the author
Lisel Mueller
19 books49 followersPoet 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)
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)
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
July 27, 2019
This is a lovely collection. Many of the poems read like musings, which I find drew me in to the poet’s thoughts right at that moment.
April 13, 2021
Visiting my native
country with my
American-born husband
I am as much of a stranger
in this particular town
as he is. But when we walk
along the Neckar, an old folk song
comes back to me and I sing it to him
without a slip. In the restaurant
I notice my voice and my gestures
are like those of the women around me.
He watches me change contours
in the polished concave of his spoon;
he stirs his coffee and I dissolve.
When I come back I look different,
while he remains what he is,
what he always was.
April 27, 2016
Waving from Shore is the second book of Lisel Mueller’s poetry that I’ve read in the past few months. She published it in 1989, nine years after The Need to Hold Still, a collection of poems as fine as any I’ve ever read. I have to admit, though, that each time I’ve come to the end of both of these wonderful books, it’s with no small amount of trepidation that I type her name into Google and press the search button to find out if someone with such powers is still breathing the same air that I breathe. Having just passed her 92nd birthday, I know there’s a good chance that soon she won't be.
I have one grandfather still alive, now not a year from 90. I rarely have a chance to see or speak to him; we live far apart and he cannot hear well enough to speak on the phone. But his life for me is a connection into the past. His stories are mine, even if he’s only conveyed them across the foggy channel of time. I’ll be sad when he dies. My connection to Lisel Mueller is less personal, of course, but her stories as conveyed through her poetry stir just as deeply within me as any my grandfather has shared. That’s the thing about great poetry, you read it and it possesses you. The sadness I will feel when I learn of her passing will be different than when my grandfather dies, it’s true. But just as the memory of him will live on in me, so too will Mueller’s poetry.
Both Mueller and my grandfather will have lived through a history that seems both more purposeful and more callous than does that which we crawl through today. I realize, though, that it’s impossible to feel history in the present, or to feel it in a way that might approximate what it will feel like for my grandchildren at 40. This fact, perhaps more than any other, leads me to write. When I wrote about The Need to Hold Still I praised Beginning in 1914, a sweeping narrative poem that blended the personal of Mueller’s life and the impersonal of world historical events, namely the specter of Nazism and WWII, into a cinemascape of momentous beauty and unfathomable tragedy.
In this review I want to draw attention a poem filled with similar emotions, though less precisely sketched. Cavalleria Rusticana ends with a beginning of sorts:
This scene she describes is one from the Arena di Verona, a Roman stadium built nearly two thousand years ago and, amazingly, still in use today. For most of the last century, it’s been home to an annual festival of music. 30,000 opera lovers pack into the antiquarian confines and hold their collective breath while the continent’s most beloved voices sate the audience’s ancient ache for drama. In August 1935, Mueller was on hand with her family to watch mezzo-soprano Lina Lanza sing the part of Lucia in Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana. Her poem continues:
We come to the end and realize that we’re no longer ensconced in the drama of art, but rather in the horror of the Shoah. She was 11 that night at the opera; perhaps her father had taken his family on an Italian holiday where, unlike in Germany, his family would have still been treated with a measure of decency, or perhaps he was already considering the alternatives to an increasingly perilous existence in his native Hamburg. Either way, it wouldn’t matter: neither story nor motive nor “All the fireflies in the world”, as the first line of the poem reads, could draw breath from the living darkness that had filled the sky. Six million would perish.
The question then becomes, how does one live with such a memory, youthful as it may have been? Mueller’s The Art of Forgetting tells the story of Carlota and Maximilian, the “fairy tale emperor and empress / eating from golden plates / in a wilderness that beguiled them.” That wilderness was a Mexico unspoilt by a European civilization that, to quote Frantz Fanon, “never stops talking of man yet massacres him at every one of its street corners, in every corner of the world.” The young emperor and empress lived in peace “and Maximilian liked / orange trees better than armies.” But then everything changed: “Three years. Then history flipped / its coin and slammed it down.” Just as it had done for the young Mueller, who at 15 was forced to flee her home in Germany and move to the United States. She writes:
Je suis Carlota, so says many a survivor of such unimaginable horror, if not literally, metaphorically, for how else can the mind process the loss of an entire family—parents, children, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, nieces, nephews, cousins, and in-laws—except through retreat into its own exclusive madhouse. Mueller was fortunate that her immediate family made it out together; many of Hitler’s victims were not so fortunate.
Short of retreat, what is it that can save us? The art of Cavalleria Rusticana, by its very name, is hardly meant to save. Yet in spite of that fateful performance, Mueller very often does turn to music as a way to impose order on her world. In Family and Friends she uses the imagery of the frantic family meal and all the attendant distraction that one can expect to come along with it. Harried parents, challenging adolescents, predictable conversations that lead down adversarial paths only to find that: “Like a knot, attention / is coming apart all at once.” But then something unexpected happens:
What I love so much about that poem is how the visual accouterments and the natural cadences work so perfectly in tandem, and then that implicit little pause before the last line, and then the final denouement that releases all the coiled tension of the opening lines of the poem. "Our voices have changed."
And let me lastly just mention one other poem for its similarly beautiful mix of imagery and aesthetic value. It’s a prose poem, ekphrastically constructed, about Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, that famous portrait of a mid-century diner and its late night inhabitants:
Once again, a poem becomes a vessel for memory as Mueller contemplates:
If there’s anything as evocative of what it felt like to walk around the abandoned central business districts of the late 1980s America, I’ve never come across it. And then, too, the embedded social consciousness that Mueller allows to rise to the surface in a painting which, as she noted, with its harsh light seems to beckon its viewer to forget that it’s the human stories that matter most.
If there’s one thing that I can say about Mueller’s poetry, now that I’ve read two of her collections, it’s that she is unfailingly humanist in bearing. That one person can reflect so beautifully on the meaning of life, and its dignity even despite everyday complications, is a testament to her poetic imagination. It will be a sad day indeed when Lisel Mueller is no longer here to inspire us in our collective struggle against that sufficient, breathing dark that always seems to lurk just above us. Thankfully, though, we’ll have the legacy of her poetry, which in sum total is a glorious humanistic ode to life. © Jeffrey L. Otto, April 24, 2016
I have one grandfather still alive, now not a year from 90. I rarely have a chance to see or speak to him; we live far apart and he cannot hear well enough to speak on the phone. But his life for me is a connection into the past. His stories are mine, even if he’s only conveyed them across the foggy channel of time. I’ll be sad when he dies. My connection to Lisel Mueller is less personal, of course, but her stories as conveyed through her poetry stir just as deeply within me as any my grandfather has shared. That’s the thing about great poetry, you read it and it possesses you. The sadness I will feel when I learn of her passing will be different than when my grandfather dies, it’s true. But just as the memory of him will live on in me, so too will Mueller’s poetry.
Both Mueller and my grandfather will have lived through a history that seems both more purposeful and more callous than does that which we crawl through today. I realize, though, that it’s impossible to feel history in the present, or to feel it in a way that might approximate what it will feel like for my grandchildren at 40. This fact, perhaps more than any other, leads me to write. When I wrote about The Need to Hold Still I praised Beginning in 1914, a sweeping narrative poem that blended the personal of Mueller’s life and the impersonal of world historical events, namely the specter of Nazism and WWII, into a cinemascape of momentous beauty and unfathomable tragedy.
In this review I want to draw attention a poem filled with similar emotions, though less precisely sketched. Cavalleria Rusticana ends with a beginning of sorts:
at my first opera,
I watched a swarm of matches
light up the Roman arena
until we were silent. It was as if
music were a night-blooming flower
that would not open
until we held our breath.
This scene she describes is one from the Arena di Verona, a Roman stadium built nearly two thousand years ago and, amazingly, still in use today. For most of the last century, it’s been home to an annual festival of music. 30,000 opera lovers pack into the antiquarian confines and hold their collective breath while the continent’s most beloved voices sate the audience’s ancient ache for drama. In August 1935, Mueller was on hand with her family to watch mezzo-soprano Lina Lanza sing the part of Lucia in Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana. Her poem continues:
Then the full-blown sound,
the single-minded combat
of passion: voices sharpening
their glittering blades on one another,
electing to live or die.
It was that simple. The story was
of no importance, the motive lost
in the sufficient, breathing dark.
If there was a moon I don’t remember.
We come to the end and realize that we’re no longer ensconced in the drama of art, but rather in the horror of the Shoah. She was 11 that night at the opera; perhaps her father had taken his family on an Italian holiday where, unlike in Germany, his family would have still been treated with a measure of decency, or perhaps he was already considering the alternatives to an increasingly perilous existence in his native Hamburg. Either way, it wouldn’t matter: neither story nor motive nor “All the fireflies in the world”, as the first line of the poem reads, could draw breath from the living darkness that had filled the sky. Six million would perish.
The question then becomes, how does one live with such a memory, youthful as it may have been? Mueller’s The Art of Forgetting tells the story of Carlota and Maximilian, the “fairy tale emperor and empress / eating from golden plates / in a wilderness that beguiled them.” That wilderness was a Mexico unspoilt by a European civilization that, to quote Frantz Fanon, “never stops talking of man yet massacres him at every one of its street corners, in every corner of the world.” The young emperor and empress lived in peace “and Maximilian liked / orange trees better than armies.” But then everything changed: “Three years. Then history flipped / its coin and slammed it down.” Just as it had done for the young Mueller, who at 15 was forced to flee her home in Germany and move to the United States. She writes:
That was when they began
Carlota’s lapses, her erasures
She wiped out the unbearable,
erased her husband’s execution
and lived for sixty oblivious years
in an out-of-the-way palace,
her exclusive madhouse,
wondering vaguely each evening
why he did not join her for dinner.
Je suis Carlota, so says many a survivor of such unimaginable horror, if not literally, metaphorically, for how else can the mind process the loss of an entire family—parents, children, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, nieces, nephews, cousins, and in-laws—except through retreat into its own exclusive madhouse. Mueller was fortunate that her immediate family made it out together; many of Hitler’s victims were not so fortunate.
Short of retreat, what is it that can save us? The art of Cavalleria Rusticana, by its very name, is hardly meant to save. Yet in spite of that fateful performance, Mueller very often does turn to music as a way to impose order on her world. In Family and Friends she uses the imagery of the frantic family meal and all the attendant distraction that one can expect to come along with it. Harried parents, challenging adolescents, predictable conversations that lead down adversarial paths only to find that: “Like a knot, attention / is coming apart all at once.” But then something unexpected happens:
In the end it is music that saves us.
the Waldstein Sonata. We move
to couches and padded chairs,
rest our heads against pillows.
Petunias, blue velvet,
bloom in a bowl. For a long time
we listen and no one says anything.
When we do, our voices have changed.
What I love so much about that poem is how the visual accouterments and the natural cadences work so perfectly in tandem, and then that implicit little pause before the last line, and then the final denouement that releases all the coiled tension of the opening lines of the poem. "Our voices have changed."
And let me lastly just mention one other poem for its similarly beautiful mix of imagery and aesthetic value. It’s a prose poem, ekphrastically constructed, about Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, that famous portrait of a mid-century diner and its late night inhabitants:
…It is there to keep me honest. I look at a couple having coffee
in a diner late at night; their relationship is ambiguous; she looks
fragile, vulnerable, no longer quite young; his forehead is shad-
owed by the wide brim of his hat. Their faces are bleached by the
merciless light. The gaunt-faced waiter leans forward; he wants to
tell them about himself. They are someone to talk to in this plate-
glass house with the redundant salt and pepper shakers, the care-
fully spaced chrome napkin holders…
Once again, a poem becomes a vessel for memory as Mueller contemplates:
…a mystery. Forty-five years ago, when Hopper painted
these people, did he know they would endure? I see them down-
town in the underground concourse below the glass hotel and the
granite-and-marble bank; in tat spooky region line with over-
priced ships selling cheap goods, and drab cafes tarted up with
lights. There they are, no older, only he is hatless these days. The
waiter-turned-waitress is still thin-faced and can’t support her kids
on what she makes…
If there’s anything as evocative of what it felt like to walk around the abandoned central business districts of the late 1980s America, I’ve never come across it. And then, too, the embedded social consciousness that Mueller allows to rise to the surface in a painting which, as she noted, with its harsh light seems to beckon its viewer to forget that it’s the human stories that matter most.
If there’s one thing that I can say about Mueller’s poetry, now that I’ve read two of her collections, it’s that she is unfailingly humanist in bearing. That one person can reflect so beautifully on the meaning of life, and its dignity even despite everyday complications, is a testament to her poetic imagination. It will be a sad day indeed when Lisel Mueller is no longer here to inspire us in our collective struggle against that sufficient, breathing dark that always seems to lurk just above us. Thankfully, though, we’ll have the legacy of her poetry, which in sum total is a glorious humanistic ode to life. © Jeffrey L. Otto, April 24, 2016
January 13, 2023
The Artist
The girl who never speaks
draws a horse like you've never seen,
a horse with feathers,
with eyes cut into diamonds
like the eyes of a bee,
with a tail of braided grasses
and a mane of waterfalls.
Its ears are lilies
and its nostrils homes for swallows,
but its fine hooves and ankles
are what they always were,
because there is no greater beauty.
Where she lives there are no horses,
but she has seen them in books
and watched them rear and whinny
on television. She understands
their patience, day after day,
in the land of the flies. In a dream
she encountered a solitary
blue horse in a field. He came close
and ate an apple out of her hand.
She draws him over and over
in absolute silence. She is afraid
language will fritter away the world,
its gleam and thunder,
its soft, curled lip,
the flying back which only
she dares to ride.
July 1, 2019
Just beautiful ... Mueller's images are breathtaking in their clarity and ability to evoke emotion. She writes about her parents, about music and art, about death, about current events. She is definitely a poet I want to read more of.
"After Your Death" resonated particularly strongly with me as I enter the fifth year since my husband's passing. These lines end the poem (just to give you a taste of her power and insight): "As long as we live, we keep you from dying your real death, which is being forgotten. We say we don't want to abandon you, when we mean we can't let you go."
"After Your Death" resonated particularly strongly with me as I enter the fifth year since my husband's passing. These lines end the poem (just to give you a taste of her power and insight): "As long as we live, we keep you from dying your real death, which is being forgotten. We say we don't want to abandon you, when we mean we can't let you go."
August 29, 2019
This short book of poems is divided into three parts (like Gaul).
The first part was fine, but the second is very strong. One excellent poem after another. Poems about fathers and children, about death and history and starting over.
There are poems in this collection I am looking forward to sharing with friends.
The first part was fine, but the second is very strong. One excellent poem after another. Poems about fathers and children, about death and history and starting over.
There are poems in this collection I am looking forward to sharing with friends.
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March 15, 2013811.54 M946w 1989
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews