Curriculum Vitae
by Lisel Mueller
(published in her 1996 book, Alive Together: New and Selected Poems, from Louisiana State University Press)
1) I was born in a Free City, near the North Sea.
2) In the year of my birth, money was shredded into
confetti. A loaf of bread cost a million marks. Of
course I do not remember this.
3) Parents and grandparents hovered around me. The
world I lived in had a soft voice and no claws.
4) A cornucopia filled with treats took me into a building
with bells. A wide-bosomed teacher took me in.
5) At home the bookshelves connected heaven and earth.
6) On Sundays the city child waded through pinecones
and primrose marshes, a short train ride away.
7) My country was struck by history more deadly than
earthquakes or hurricanes.
8) My father was busy eluding the monsters. My mother
told me the walls had ears. I learned the burden of secrets.
9) I moved into the too bright days, the too dark nights
of adolescence.
10) Two parents, two daughters, we followed the sun
and the moon across the ocean. My grandparents stayed
behind in darkness.
11) In the new language everyone spoke too fast. Eventually
I caught up with them.
12) When I met you, the new language became the language
of love.
13) The death of the mother hurt the daughter into poetry.
The daughter became a mother of daughters.
14) Ordinary life: the plenty and thick of it. Knots tying
threads to everywhere. The past pushed away, the future left
unimagined for the sake of the glorious, difficult, passionate
present.
15) Years and years of this.
16) The children no longer children. An old man’s pain, an
old man’s loneliness.
17) And then my father too disappeared.
18) I tried to go home again. I stood at the door to my
childhood, but it was closed to the public.
19) One day, on a crowded elevator, everyone’s face was younger
than mine.
20) So far, so good. The brilliant days and nights are
breathless in their hurry. We follow, you and I.
A favorite poem, by a favorite poet, in a favorite book!
For those of you not in academia, a curriculum vitae, or C.V., is just a resume for academics. Unlike the "no more than 2 pages" resumes everyone else has, C.V.'s are supposed to list everything, and the longer, the better. Of course, they are not autobiographies, but work histories, and I have no idea why Mueller called this autobiographical poem Curriculum Vitae, but I like it.
I love so much about this poem, but I will try and keep this short. First, it's a list poem, and I am just a sucker for these!
I love how Mueller tells us she was born and first lived in Germany, and she, her sister, and her parents escaped WWII Germany without being direct, but being descriptive enough for readers to understand.
The "I" turns to a 3rd person POV for stanzas 13-16, created by the death of Mueller's mother. The syntax changes as well--short, fragmented sentences take the place of complete and correct sentences. The father's death--which she does not even call a death--returns to the rhythm of stanzas 1-12.
I love how she realizes she has aged in stanza 19. For you younger readers--yes! This realization is often this quick and mundane.
The love from stanza 12 returns to the last stanza. They are still in love, still together, and time goes quickly, but they are together.
Stanzas 7 and 8 are probably my favorite, simply because I am in awe that in just a few sentences she manages to convey the horror of living in Nazi Germany.
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