Lisel Mueller facts for kids

Lisel Mueller (born Elisabeth Neumann, February 8, 1924 – February 21, 2020) was a famous American poet and translator. She was born in Germany. Her family had to leave their home because of the Nazi government. She came to the U.S. in 1939 when she was 15 years old.

Lisel Mueller worked as a book reviewer. She also taught at several colleges. She started writing poetry in the 1950s. Her first book of poems came out in 1965. She won many important awards for her poetry. These included the National Book Award in 1981 and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1997. She was the only poet born in Germany to win the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

Lisel Mueller's Life and Journey

Lisel Mueller was born Elisabeth Neumann in Hamburg, Germany. Her father, Fritz C. Neumann, was a high school teacher. He believed in new ways of teaching. In 1933, he spoke out against the Nazi ideas. Because of this, he lost his job when the Nazis took power.

Her mother, Ilse, was an elementary teacher. She worked hard to support the family. In 1935, the Gestapo, which was the Nazi secret police, questioned her father for four days. He then moved away, first to Italy, then to the U.S. He was accepted as a political refugee in 1937. He became a professor at Evansville College.

Lisel, her mother, and her younger sister Ingeborg followed him. They arrived in the U.S. on June 9, 1939. In America, she started using the name Lisel. She finished her studies at the University of Evansville in 1944. After her mother passed away in 1953, Lisel began writing poetry. She published her first small book, Dependencies, in 1965. She had spent twelve years studying poetry on her own.

In 1943, she married Paul Mueller. In the 1960s, they built a home in Lake Forest, a town near Chicago. Lisel wrote that even though her family came to the Midwest, they lived in cities or towns. They had two daughters, Lucy and Jenny. Lisel earned money by working as a receptionist. She also wrote book reviews for the Chicago Daily News in the 1970s.

Teaching and Later Years

Lisel Mueller taught at several colleges. These included the University of Chicago, Elmhurst College in Illinois, and Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont. She also taught at Warren Wilson College. After her husband died in 2001, she stopped publishing new books. Her eyesight also became worse.

In her last years, Lisel Mueller lived in a retirement home in Chicago, Illinois. She passed away on February 21, 2020. She was 96 years old.

Lisel Mueller's Books

Poetry Collections

Lisel Mueller's poems often start with simple observations. Even though she wrote in English, her German background influenced her work. She sometimes mentioned German fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm. She also quoted the German writer Bertold Brecht. In her 1992 poem "Curriculum Vitae," she wrote about her home country. She said it was "struck by history more deadly than earthquakes or hurricanes."

Her poems are known for being easy to understand. But they are also complex and have many layers of meaning. Sometimes her poems were funny and playful. But often, there was a quiet sadness in her writing.

Here are some of her poetry books:

• Dependencies (1965)
• Life of a Queen (1970)
• The Private Life (1975) — This book won the Lamont Poetry Selection.
• Voices from the Forest (1977)
• The Need to Hold Still (1980) — This book won the National Book Award.
• Second Language (1986)
• Waving from Shore (1989)
• Learning to Play by Ear (1990)
• Alive Together: New & Selected Poems (1996) — This book won the Pulitzer Prize.

Translated Works

Lisel Mueller also translated books from German into English.

• Selected Later Poems of Marie Luise Kaschnitz (1980)
• Circe's Mountain, stories by Marie Luise Kaschnitz (1990)

Awards and Honors

Lisel Mueller received many important awards for her writing:

• 1975: Lamont Poetry Prize for her book The Private Life
• 1981: National Book Award for Poetry for The Need to Hold Still
• 1990: Carl Sandburg Award
• 1990: National Endowment for the Arts fellowship
• 1997: Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Alive Together: New & Selected Poems
• 2002: Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize
• 2019: Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (a high honor from Germany)

See also

In Spanish: Lisel Mueller para niños