Juxtaposition + Context- Lisel Mueller

Recently, I've been intrigued by the poetry of Lisel Mueller. Born in 1924 she won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1997. Her parents came from an academic background (bio short) (bio long) and fled Nazi Germany to work and live at the University of Evansville in Indiana. Some analysts say her work includes elements of a dark side- I like to think of it as contemplative. In support of the artist's work, here is her 1997 book Alive Together. I picked up a used copy from Alibris.

In a PBS interview 1997, Elizabeth Farnsworth asked, "Do you have a goal when you're writing poems? Is there some purpose you want to achieve when you write?"

Mueller responded, "Not really, not consciously. Something just comes to me. Usually it's the juxtaposition of two things. I see something in a new context in which I had not seen it before, and this excites me, and I mind this, try to figure it out in a poem."

It is the same for me. Sometimes the relative position of things makes them stand out against each other and it's interesting. I wonder about them and try to figure it out. It could be the light of the clouds and sky against the trees, the perfect reflection of sky water or the quiet of a conversation and understanding with a friend or family. About how business operates- measured by exacting metrics but enacted by breathing, emotion, thinking, tactile, unique human forms. These juxtapositions stand out and provide fuel for my thinking and writing. And often time it is through the writing that I come to a better understanding.

For the past two weeks I've kept a browser tab open with her poem, 'Monet Refuses the Operation'. I've read the poem many times but for some reason every time I go to close the tab I hesitate, there is more to interpret. Monet had cataracts and in this poem he is speaking to the doctor, explaining why he refuses the operation to remove them. Mueller depicts Monet saying, 'I will not return to a universe where objects don't know each other.'

When you begin to look at the Universe as being manifestations of one idea, you see a connection where objects know each other. There is no real separation. Monet and Mueller are saying this. In her closing line she says, "Doctor, if only you could see how heaven pulls earth into its arms and how infinitely the heart expands to claim this world, blue vapor without end."

That is beauty, that is nature, that is the Divine. I am now ready to close the tab.