Lisel Mueller was born in 1924 in Hamburg, Germany, and moved to the United States with her parents in 1939. Both parents were teachers, and her father was a political dissident as well. Escaping Nazi Germany, he settled his family in Evans-ville, Indiana, where Lisel quickly learned to speak English, earning American citizenship six years later. As an extremely bright student, she spent only one year in an American high school before attending the University ofEvansville, graduating in 1944 at the age of twenty.

Although she dabbled in some adolescent poetry while in school, Lisel did not begin to write serious poetry until after the death of her mother in 1953. At that time, she began a serf-taught course of study, including both traditional forms and free verse, eventually settling into her own simple, unadorned poetic style. Determined to combine her love of the creative arts with a "normal" life...