Alive Together

Book excerpt: In a collection that represents over thirty-five years of her writing life, this distinguished poet explores a wide range of subjects, which include her cultural and family history and reflect her fascination with music and the discoveries offered by language. In fact, her book is a testament to the miraculous power of language to interpret and transform our world. It is a testament that invites readers to share her vision of experiences we all have in common: sorrow, tenderness, desire, the revelations of art, and morality—“the hard, dry smack of death against the glass.” In the title piece Mueller brings a sense of enduring and unclouded wonder to a recognition of all those whose lives might have been our own. “Speaking of marvels,” says the poem’s speaker, “I am alive.” Thus we, too—alive together—are marvels, and so are our children: who—but for endless ifs— might have missed out on being alive together with marvels and follies and longings and lies and wishes and error and humor and mercy and journeys and voices and faces and colors and summers and mornings and knowledge and tears and chance. Imaginative, poignant, and wise—Alive Together is a marvelous book, an act of faith and courage in the face of life’s enduring mystery.