Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Lisel Mueller, whose writing "expressed the losses of the immigrant and history, and the beauty of the natural world, domestic life, love and grief," died February 21, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. She was 96. Mueller fled Germany at 15 and came to the U.S., where she wrote in her poem "Curriculum Vitae":
In the new language everyone spoke too fast.
Eventually
I caught up with them.
"She caught up and more, using her 'new language' to craft ravishing poems in English that would win her the Pulitzer Prize and many other literary awards," the Sun-Times noted.
"She's a classic American immigrant success story, and also the classic story not just of immigrant success but also of refugee contribution to this country's culture," said her daughter Jenny.
"I think it is the poet's job to find the unconscious spring that unites all people," Mueller once told the Sun-Times.
Author of six books of poetry, she earned the 1997 Pulitzer for Alive Together: New and Selected Poems when she was 73. In 2002, she was awarded the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. She won the 1981 National Book Award for her collection, The Need to Hold Still. In 1975, she was recognized with the Lamont Poetry Selection Award from the Academy of American Poets for The Private Life.
Mueller wrote literary criticism for the Chicago Daily News and Poetry magazine; taught at Elmhurst College, Goddard College, the University of Chicago and Warren Wilson College; and helped found the Chicago Poetry Center. During the Carter administration, she was invited to the White House for a night to honor poetry. Last year, she was awarded a federal Order of Merit from Germany.
From her poem "Immortality":
My attention was on the fly:
that this slight body
with its transparent wings
and lifespan of one human day
still craved its particular share
of sweetness, a century later.