SOURCE: “To the Wall,” in Poetry, Vol. 130, September, 1977, pp. 342–53.

In the following review, Allen contrasts Mueller'sThe Private Life with Robert Pack's collection, Keeping Watch.

[Lisel Mueller] is one of those poets who has a genius for finding subjects. Her new collection, winner of the Lamont Poetry Award for publication of a second book, is thoroughly intelligent, the poems finding and holding onto subjects and feelings, images which occur to many but most often slip away unrecorded. Mueller can turn her attention almost anywhere and come up with a fine crafted poem. Her work is most characterized by its loving, responsive tone, her sympathy and awareness of how special it is to know you have a private life up to answering, with poems, things which delight or sadden you.

Reading A Private Life, I kept wishing I had known there was a poem here, or here, or there...