“Lisel Mueller knows a few things we could stand to learn.” —Washington Post
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. Now available for the first time in paperback, Dependencies affirms Mueller as a poet of control, precision, and feeling. Driven by the sense of life as process, these poems linger on the natural landmarks of human experience—those excursions into awareness that single out and illumine certain facets of growth, connection, creation, and decline. Mueller has commented that she does not “want to just put [her] poetry in a drawer.” The reissue of this affecting first book again brings her earliest work out of the bureau and into the bookstores for all to enjoy.
Winner of the 2002 Ruth Lilly Prize given by Poetry magazine and a founding member of the Poetry Center of Chicago, Lisel Mueller was the author of seven volumes of poems: Alive Together, winner of the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; The Need to Hold Still, awarded the 1981 National Book Award for Poetry; Waving from Shore, recipient of a 1990 Carl Sandburg Award; The Private Life, the 1975 Lamont Poetry Selection of the Academy of American Poets; and three other volumes.
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