SOURCE: A review of Waving From Shore by Lisel Mueller, in Southern Humanities Journal, Vol. 25, Winter, 1991, pp. 95–7.

In the following review, Brumm offers a positive assessment of Waving From Shore, contending that Mueller has “succeeded in creating a complex and eloquent canvas.”

In her latest volume of poetry, Waving From Shore, Lisel Mueller uses the complex lens of her language to focus on the contrast between the larger world offering infinite possibilities and the circumscribed patch which she inhabits. In “Large Jigsaw Puzzle,” after struggling to explore the mystifying universe, she chooses to remain “back in the middle, / absorbed in the local order / of leaves and thorns and blossoms, / my vision confined to the limits / of a manageable patch, / the world at large still full of holes.”

In describing this disparity, Mueller conveys in many poems her acceptance of a minor predictable role in life and the relinquishing...