Van Duyn, Mona

▪ 2005

      American poet (b. May 9, 1921, Waterloo, Iowa—d. Dec. 2, 2004, University City, Mo.), wrote about ordinary middle-class suburban life with clarity and humour. She used the rigour of formal technique to examine moments of domesticity in an unpretentious manner. After graduating from Iowa State Teachers College (now the University of Northern Iowa) and the University of Iowa, she began teaching. She founded the periodical Perspective: A Quarterly of Literature and the Arts in 1947, together with her husband, Jarvis A. Thurston, a fellow academic. Her first book of poetry, Valentines to the Wide World, was published in 1959. Her third book of verse, To See, to Take (1970), captured the National Book Award. In 1991 she won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry for Near Changes, and the following year she was selected as U.S. poet laureate, the first woman to be named to the post. Van Duyn taught at the University of Iowa, the University of Louisville, Ky., and Washington University, St. Louis, Mo. Selected Poems, which appeared in 2002, was a survey of her career.

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▪ American poet

in full  Mona Jane Van Duyn 

born May 9, 1921, Waterloo, Iowa, U.S.

died December 2, 2004, University City, Missouri

      American Pulitzer Prize-winning poet noted for her examination of the daily lives of ordinary people and for mixing the prosaic with the unusual, the simple with the sophisticated. She is frequently described as a “domestic poet” who celebrated married love.

      Van Duyn attended Iowa State Teachers College (now the University of Northern Iowa; B.A., 1942) and the University of Iowa (M.A., 1943). She taught at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop during the 1940s and later taught at several other universities and writers' workshops. In 1947, with her husband, Jarvis Thurston, she founded Perspective: A Quarterly of Literature and the Arts, which she coedited until 1967. Her first volume of poetry, Valentines to the Wide World, was published in 1959. She won recognition following the publication of To See, to Take (1970), receiving the Bollingen Prize for achievement in American poetry (1970) and the National Book Award (1971). Her other works include A Time of Bees (1964), Merciful Disguises (1973), and Near Changes (1990), for which she was awarded the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Firefall and If It Be Not I: Collected Poems 1959–1982 were published in 1993. From 1992 to 1993 Van Duyn served as poet laureate consultant in poetry of the United States, the first woman to hold the post.

      Van Duyn used wry humour, insight, irony, and technical skill to find meaning and possibility in a merciless world. She found in love and art the possibility of redemption—“but against that rage slowly may learn to pit / love and art, which are compassionate.” Van Duyn's work is filled with literary references, as in "Leda Reconsidered," a response to W.B. Yeats (Yeats, William Butler)'s "Leda and the Swan," and in "An Essay on Criticism," which employs the genre and heroic couplets (couplet) of Alexander Pope (Pope, Alexander). Her characteristic use of formal verse sets her apart from many of her contemporaries. In "Since You Asked Me…," she explained:

Why rhyme?

To say I love you to language, especially now

that its only viable components seem to be

“like,” “y'know?,” and “Wow”!

      and

It's a challenge to chaos hurled.

Why use it? Why, simply

to save the world.

      She defended her use of metre as “not just style but lifestyle.”

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