Today we say goodbye to one of our founders, Lisel Mueller.
Lisel Mueller lived an extraordinary life. She and her family fled Nazi Germany when Lisel was 15 years old. She became a poet, a teacher, a writer of criticism, and a founder of our organization. She was awarded the Pulitzer in 1997 for “Alive Together: New and Selected Poems.” In 2019 the German Consul General of Chicago awarded Lisel the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.
To honor her today, I invite you to explore her page in our archive. On this page you’ll find streaming audio of Lisel’s 1995 reading for the Poetry Center.
Our work and our organization are indebted to Lisel’s belief in the value of poetry: to allow us to speak of our greatest crimes and sing to the heavens–to grapple with all that life holds. We thank Lisel for creating this work, for her poetry, and for a life lived so vibrantly, conscientiously, alive.
As Lisel travels on, my wish is to send her off with her own, “Spell for a Traveler,” which you may read below.
