Second Language is the fourth volume of work from the highly acclaimed poet Lisel Mueller. The second language of the title, English, supplanted Mueller's native language when she came to the United States from Hitler's Germany at age fifteen. But other second languages are at work here as well. The poems in this collection have to do with memory and metaphor, two forces that enable us to interpret our experience. Each is in a sense a second language, and in Mueller's employ each gains expression in an imaginative and humanistic voice. In ""English as a Second Language,"" the various meanings of Second Language come together lucidly and effectively.

In spite of her renown in Germany: is a distinguished poet as well as a writer of fiction and essays, Marie Luisc Kaschnitz (190 -1974) is scarcely recognized in the United States. This first book-length translation into English of her work makes available a selection of poems that dale from the last two decades of her life and that articulate, in the translator's words, the slow, painful self-discoveries that come with time and suffering."

Originally published in 1980.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

In spite of her renown in Germany :is a distinguished poet as well as a writer of fiction and essays, Marie Luisc Kaschnitz (190!-1974) is scarcely recognized in the United States. This first book-length translation into English of her work makes available a selection of poems that dale from the last two decades of her life and that articulate, in the translator's words, the slow, painful self-discoveries that come with time and suffering." Originally published in 1980. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Winner of the National Book Award for Poetry An adventurer, Lisel Mueller pursues the protean possibilities of communication. In Dreiser's works she finds language solid, ""as plain as money, / a workable means of exchange."" More often she experiences exhilaration in the shapes that communication makes possible. In ""Talking with Helen,"" for example, she re-creates Heller Keller's flash of discovery when water suddenly became language, the stream that connected time and space, maple leaves and hands. Mueller's poetry links varying forms: music and discourse, memory and immediacy. Perennial weeds in her title poem recall ancient times and prayerful monks. Musical names, ""Teasel / yarrow / goldenrod / wheat / bed straw"", hold the moment still like the echoes of a tolling bell. ""I'm trying to make connections,"" Lisel Mueller says of her poems, ""looking for links between where we have been and where we are going, between the life outside and the life within.

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 mortality - "the hard, dry smack of death against the glass". To this community Mueller presents moments after moment where the personal and public realms intersect, where lives ranging from her own to those of Mary Shelley and Anton Webern illuminate the ways in which history shapes our lives. In "Brendel Playing Schubert", Mueller's breathtaking linguistic virtuosity reminds us how music can transport us out of ourselves and into "the nowhere where the enchanted live"; in "Midwinter Notes", the crepuscular world, stripped of its veil, shines forth as a signal from some realm where the sense of things may be revealed. 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.