Lisel Mueller is too fond of the world "small"—small poem, small mistake, small laugh, small hands; one gets to wait for it. And sometimes the accumulations of instance and example by which she conveys her ideas are not quite pointed enough, as in "Alive Together" and "Spell for a Traveller". But many of the poems in The Private Life are as precise and energetic as could be desired. (p. 1348)