Poetry Friday: Lisel Mueller

We're traveling again this week on Poetry Friday, but this time I got my act together enough ahead of time to write a post.

I found this Lisel Mueller poem recently:

Steps Out of the Circle
Lisel Mueller

The self steps out of the circle;
it stops wanting to be
the farmer, the wife, and the child.

It stops trying to please
by learning everyone's dialect;
it finds it can live, after all,
in a world of strangers.

Here's the rest.


Reading this poem sent me looking for more by Mueller, and here are some I loved at the Poetry Foundation. 


Love Like Salt
Lisel Mueller

It lies in our hands in crystals
too intricate to decipher

It goes into the skillet
without being given a second thought

Here's the rest.


Poem for my Birthday
Lisel Mueller

I have stopped being the heroine
of my bad dreams.

Here's the rest. Scroll down - it's the second poem on the page.


When I Am Asked
Lisel Mueller

...
and placed my grief
in the mouth of language,
the only thing that would grieve with me.

That's how it ends. The rest is here.


Why We Tell Stories
for Linda Foster
Lisel Mueller

...

 3

Because the story of our life
becomes our life

Because each of us tells
the same story
but tells it differently

and none of us tells it
the same way twice

The rest is here.


Here are some other Lisel Mueller poems I've posted on my blog before: Monet Refuses the Operation and The Mermaid.


Heidi has today's roundup.