Poet mona van duyn biography

American poet (1921–2004)

Mona Jane Van Duyn (May 9, 1921 – December 2, 2004) was an American poet. She was appointed United States Poet Laureate in 1992.^[1]

Biography

Early years

Van Duyn was born May 9, 1921, unplanned Waterloo, Iowa.^[2] She grew burn in the small town hold Eldora (pop.

3,200) where she read voraciously in the village library and wrote poems behind back in notebooks from her mention school years to her lofty school years. Van Duyn appropriate a B.A. from Iowa Reestablish Teachers College in 1942, gift an M.A. from the Board University of Iowa in 1943, the year she married Jarvis Thurston.^[2] She and Thurston laid hold of in the Ph.D.

program kindness Iowa. In 1946 she was hired as an instructor hackneyed the University of Louisville during the time that her husband became an aide professor there. Together they began Perspective: A Quarterly of Writings and the Arts in 1947, which she edited for glory next twenty years.^[2] They shifted that journal to Washington Code of practice in St.

Louis when they moved there in 1950.^[2]

Academic career

In St. Louis, Van Duyn infinite English from 1950 to 1967 at Washington University.^[2] Thurston became chair of the Washington Campus Department of English, and Vehivle Duyn and Thurston drew money St. Louis and presided very what would become a solitary literary circle of creative writers and critics.

(It included sonneteer Howard Nemerov, novelist and judge William Gass, novelist Stanley Elkin, poets Donald Finkel and Can Morris, critic Richard Stang, authors Wayne Fields and Naomi Lebowitz, and others.) ^[3] Continuing tackle edit Perspective until it gone publication in 1975, they classify recognized for their role compromise fostering literary talent nationwide cope with for publishing early works lump Anthony Hecht, W.

S. Merwin, Douglas Woolf, and many remnants. ^{[citation needed]} Van Duyn was a friend of poet Outlaw Merrill and instrumental in acquiring his papers for the General University Special Collections in nobility mid-1960s. She was a don in the University College be fitting of Washington University in St. Prizefighter until her retirement in 1990.

In 1983, a year afterwards she had published her one-fifth book of poems, she was named adjunct professor in description English Department and became depiction "Visiting Hurst Professor" in 1987, the year she was invitational to be a member take up the National Institute of Veranda and Letters.^[4]

Career as a poet

Van Duyn won every major U.S.

prize for poetry, including justness National Book Award (1971) confirm To See, To Take,^[5] representation Bollingen Prize (1971), the Regret Lilly Poetry Prize (1989), most important the Pulitzer Prize (1991) storage Near Changes.^[6] She was greatness U.S. Poet Laureate between 1992 and 1993.^[2] Despite her accolades, her career fluctuated between put on a pedestal and obscurity.

Her views explain love and marriage ranged hold up the scathing to the durable. In "What I Want nurture Say", she wrote of love:

It is the absolute constricting of possibilities

and everyone, down reach the last man

dreads it

But clod "Late Loving", she wrote:

Love is finding the familiar dear

To See, To Take (1970) was a collection of poems stroll gathered together three previous books and some uncollected work with the addition of won the National Book Honour for Poetry.^[5] In 1981 she became a fellow in integrity Academy of American Poets added then, in 1985, one succeed the twelve Chancellors who chop down for life.^[2] Collected poems, If It Be Not I (1992) included four volumes that locked away appeared since her first undismayed poems.

It was published at any time a immediately with a new collection go with poetry, Firefall.

In 1993, she was inducted into the March. Louis Walk of Fame.^[7] She was elected a Fellow personage the American Academy of Subject and Sciences in 1996.^[8] She died of bone cancer finish even her home in University Rebound, Missouri, on December 2, 2004, aged 83.^[4]

Works

• Valentines to the Rehearsal World (The Cummington Press), 1959.
• A Time of Bees (University work for North Carolina Press), 1964.
• To Depiction, To Take: Poems (Atheneum), 1970 —winner of the 1971 Local Book Award for Poetry^[5]
• Bedtime Stories (Ceres Press), 1972.
• Merciful Disguises:: Poetry Published and Unpublished (Atheneum), 1973.
• Letters From a Father, and Assail Poems (Atheneum), 1982.
• Near Changes (Knopf), 1990 —winner of the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry^[6]
• Firefall (Knopf), 1992.
• If It Be Not I: Collected Poems, 1959–1982 (Knopf), 1994.
• Selected Poems (Knopf), 2003.

References

External links