Inherited my poet mom's bad eyesight: There's an extra "n" in D'Annunzio.

Lisel Mueller's father, Fritz Neumann, eked out a living teaching German-Jewish children in private Italian schools set up for this purpose. One was in Gardone Riviera, close to D'Annuzio's estate. Visiting as a child, my mother saw old D'Annunzio driving out of his gates, to bystander applause.

Yes, I'm her daughter! One of two, both of us in our 60s now. I am always glad to hear of poets who read her, so I'm most grateful for your message.

You're welcome! (I occasionally check out Lisel Mueller posts on Bluesky.)

Yes, but Whistler came in only after she reached the 11th of 20 drafts. She wrote about the draft process for this poem in an essay called "'After Whistler': A Poem in Search of Itself," included in the essay collection "Learning to Play by Ear."

The "hip-hop/poetry/spoken word nexus" that supposedly makes the town so great smuggles an awful lot of aesthetic variety and ambition into the middle term. I lived in or near the city for decades and saw the stifling effects of "big shoulders" stereotypes.