Pulitzer poet Lisel Mueller answers De-Man’s rhetorical question, “can autobiography be written in verse?” with a resounding, Yes!  April 1997, the same year she was awarded the prize, Lisel told the Chicago Tribune that, “Everything is autobiography, even if one writes something that is totally objective. The fact that it’s the subject that seizes you makes it autobiographical.”

Born in February of 1924 in Hamburg, Lisel immigrated to America at the age of 15.  She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Alive Together, a collection of poems representing 35 years of her work. The poem “Immortality” featured in the collection, plays with the blurred lines between the autobiographical and fiction. Her style and command of language and use of the sleeping beauty metaphor drawn from canonical fairy tale show incredible balance and dexterity on the thin wire tightrope where biography and fiction converge.

http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/173.html

Additional Resources:

PBS Interview with Lisel Mueller.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/entertainment/jan-june97/mueller_4-14.html

Preston, Rohan B. “Everything Is Autobiography.” Chicago Tribune: Lifestyles. April 11, 1997. http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1997-04-11/features/9704110298_1_gwendolyn-brooks-pulitzer-prize-poetry-center September 06, 2013. http://shar.es/igBFy