{"id":20572,"date":"2012-01-02T12:39:25","date_gmt":"2012-01-02T20:39:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spiken.wpengine.com\/news\/sometimes-when-the-light-poem-by-lisel-mueller\/"},"modified":"2016-10-23T16:55:40","modified_gmt":"2016-10-23T23:55:40","slug":"sometimes-when-the-light-poem-by-lisel-mueller","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/life\/sometimes-when-the-light-poem-by-lisel-mueller\/","title":{"rendered":"Sometimes, When the Light | Poem by Lisel Mueller"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><p>A wise friend told me that since the Age of Reason we\u2019ve felt we had  to explain everything, and that as a result we\u2019ve forgotten the value  of mystery. Here\u2019s a poem by Lisel Mueller that celebrates mystery.  Mueller is a Pulitzer Prize winning poet from Illinois.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p><strong>Sometimes, When the Light<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>Sometimes, when the light strikes at odd angles<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>and pulls you back into childhood<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>and you are passing a crumbling mansion<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>completely hidden behind old willows<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>or an empty convent guarded by hemlocks<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>and giant firs standing hip to hip,<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>you know again that behind that wall,<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>under the uncut hair of the willows<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>something secret is going on,<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>so marvelous and dangerous<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>that if you crawled through and saw,<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>you would die, or be happy forever.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p><em> American Life in Poetry is made possible by <a href=\"http:\/\/thepoetryfoundation.createsend3.com\/t\/r\/l\/iiiiydy\/juuhjyjdr\/y\/\" target=\"_blank\">The Poetry Foundation,<\/a> publisher of Poetry  magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the  University of Nebraska-Lincoln.\u00a0Poem copyright \u00a91980 by Lisel Mueller,  from her most recent book of poems, Alive Together: New and Selected Poems,Louisiana  State University Press, 1996. Poem reprinted by permission of Lisel  Mueller and the publisher.\u00a0Introduction copyright \u00a92011 by The Poetry  Foundation. The introduction&#8217;s author, Ted Kooser, served as United  States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress  from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts. <\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><p>\u00a0<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A wise friend told me that since the Age of Reason we\u2019ve felt we had to explain everything, and that as a result we\u2019ve forgotten the value of mystery. Here\u2019s a poem by Lisel Mueller that celebrates mystery. Mueller is a Pulitzer Prize winning poet from Illinois.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":233,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-20572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20572"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/233"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20572\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20572"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=20572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}