| Winner of the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
In a collection that represents over thirty-five years of
her writing life, this distinguished poet explores a wide
range of subjects, which include her cultural and family history
and reflect her fascination with music and the discoveries
offered by language. In fact, her book is a testament to the
miraculous power of language to interpret and transform our
world. It is a testament that invites readers to share her
vision of experiences we all have in common: sorrow, tenderness,
desire, the revelations of art, and mortality—“the hard, dry
smack of death against the glass.”
In the title piece Mueller brings a sense of enduring and
unclouded wonder to a recognition of all those whose lives
might have been our own. “Speaking of marvels,” says the poem’s
speaker, “I am alive.” Thus we, too—alive together—are marvels,
and so are our children:
who—but for endless ifs—
might have missed out on being alive
together with marvels and follies
and longings and lies and wishes
and error and humor and mercy
and journeys and voices and faces
and colors and summers and mornings
and knowledge and tears and chance.
Imaginative, poignant, and wise, Alive Together is
a marvelous book, an act of faith and courage in the face
of life’s enduring mystery.
Lisel Mueller is the author of The
Need to Hold Still, winner of the 1981 National Book
Award for poetry, and four other volumes of poetry. She lives
in Lake County, Illinois.
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