Dependencies: Poems

By Lisel Mueller

In this 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 brings her earliest work out of the bureau and into the bookstores for all to enjoy.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0807122750
• ISBN13: 9780807122754
• Release Date: March 1998
• Publisher: LSU Press
• Length: 64 Pages
• Weight: 0.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.4" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Lovely Words

I was enchanted by Mueller immediately after reading the first poem in this book. "The Blind Leading the Blind." I read the words, "something with wings went crazy against my chest once," and felt that exact motion in a familiar way. Her serious tone gives extraordinary weight to words. Her descriptions of love, admiration and nature are careful and surprising. While not every poem moved me, a good number of them did and it was worth it to read this poetry for phrases such as "O there is hope that lambs of snow will cover the wounded ground with the simple charity of whiteness one of these autumn nights, muffling our mouths out of questions after the sense of things." (from In Memory of Anton Webern, dead September15, 1945.) Dependencies is for those who appreciate the weight of lovely words.