Ann Medlock - Leads - Lisel Mueller

Lisel Mueller

Arias, Riffs & Whispers is dedicated to Lisel Mueller, a poet whose work passes the Emily Dickinson tests of both giving me chills and blowing the top of my head off. Here's that dedication:

To Lisel Mueller
whose clear, stunningly beautiful voice lives on my night stand and travels in my luggage, reminding me of the power words have when wielded by a true artist. She sings from the summit of the mountain I'm scaling.

Since Mueller taught poetry for decades and has herself won the Pulitzer for poetry, many of her poems can be found online by Googling her name. Here's just a taste:

When I Am Asked

When I am asked
how I began writing poems,
I talk about the indifference of nature.

It was soon after my mother died,
a brilliant June day,
everything blooming.

I sat on a gray stone bench
in a lovingly planted garden,
but the day lilies were as deaf
as the ears of drunken sleepers
and the roses curved inward.
Nothing was black or broken
and not a leaf fell
and the sun blared endless commercials
for summer holidays.

I sat on a gray stone bench
ringed with the ingenue faces
of pink and white impatiens
and placed my grief
in the mouth of language,
the only thing that would grieve with me.

Losing My Sight

I never knew that by August
the birds are practically silent,
only a twitter here and there.
Now I notice. Last spring
their noisiness taught me the difference
between screamers and whistlers and cooers
and O, the coloraturas.
I have already mastered
the subtlest pitches in our cat's
elegant Chinese. As the river
turns muddier before my eyes,
its sighs and little smacks
grow louder. Like a spy,
I pick up things indiscriminately:
the long approach of a truck,
car doors slammed in the dark,
the night life of animals--shrieks and hisses,
sex and plunder in the garage.
Tonight the crickets spread static
across the air, a continuous rope
of sound extended to me,
the perfect listener.

I recommend that you now get yourself your very own copy of Alive Together, to keep on your night stand, and in your luggage.

Mueller has indeed gone blind. She's moved to an assisted-living apartment, where I tracked her down with a copy of the book and an audiotape from the actors' performance at the publication party. I've had several notes back from her, which feels kind of like a Little Leaguer getting encouragement from Alex Rodriguez. But better.