SOURCE: “Parentage and Good Luck,” in Where We Stand: Women Poets on Literary Tradition, edited by Sharon Bryan, W. W. Norton & Company, 1993, pp. 139–41.

In the following essay, Mueller discusses her identification with women poets and the American literary tradition.

I was born in Germany, the older of two daughters of emancipated, urban parents who were wholly and blessedly gender-blind. My father always claimed that he fell in love with my mother when she slammed her fist on the table to emphasize her disagreement with a point he made. My mother was “feminine” in the sense that she was warm, outgoing and impulsive, but she was totally ignorant of “feminine wiles,” such as manipulation of, and deference to, men. She did not use cosmetics and worried little about her appearance. I'm sure I internalized my parents’ attitudes, especially since there was nothing about their friends to make me think...