Mona Van Duyn | |
|---|---|
 Van Duyn in 1992 or 1993 | |
| Born | (1921-05-09)May 9, 1921 Waterloo, Iowa, US |
| Died | December 2, 2004(2004-12-02) (aged 83) |
| Education | University of Northern Iowa (BA) University of Iowa (MA) |
| Occupations | Poet Professor |
| Employer(s) | University of Louisville Washington University in St. Louis |
| Title | United States Poet Laureate |
| Term | 1992-1993 |
| Awards | National Book Award (1971) Bollingen Prize (1971) Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize (1989) Pulitzer Prize (1991) |
Mona Jane Van Duyn (May 9, 1921 – December 2, 2004) was an American poet. She was appointedUnited States Poet Laureate in 1992.[1]
Van Duyn was born May 9, 1921, inWaterloo, Iowa.[2] She grew up in the small town ofEldora (pop. 3,200) where she read voraciously in the town library and wrote poems secretly in notebooks from her grade school years to her high school years. Van Duyn earned a B.A. fromIowa State Teachers College in 1942, and an M.A. from theState University of Iowa in 1943, the year she married Jarvis Thurston.[2] She and Thurston studied in the Ph.D. program at Iowa. In 1946 she was hired as an instructor at theUniversity of Louisville when her husband became an assistant professor there. Together they beganPerspective: A Quarterly of Literature and the Arts in 1947, which she edited for the next twenty years.[2] They shifted that journal toWashington University in St. Louis when they moved there in 1950.[2]
In St. Louis, Van Duyn taught English from 1950 to 1967 at Washington University.[2] Thurston became chair of the Washington University Department of English, and Van Duyn and Thurston drew to St. Louis and presided over what would become a unique literary circle of creative writers and critics. (It included poetHoward Nemerov, novelist and criticWilliam Gass, novelistStanley Elkin, poetsDonald Finkel and John Morris, criticRichard Stang, authors Wayne Fields andNaomi Lebowitz, and others.)[3] Continuing to editPerspective until it ceased publication in 1975, they are recognized for their role in fostering literary talent nationwide and for publishing early works byAnthony Hecht,W. S. Merwin,Douglas Woolf, and many others.[citation needed] Van Duyn was a friend of poetJames Merrill and instrumental in securing his papers for the Washington University Special Collections in the mid-1960s. She was a lecturer in the University College ofWashington University in St. Louis until her retirement in 1990. In 1983, a year after she had published her fifth book of poems, she was named adjunct professor in the English Department and became the "Visiting Hurst Professor" in 1987, the year she was invited to be a member of theNational Institute of Arts and Letters.[4]
Van Duyn won every major U.S. prize for poetry, including theNational Book Award (1971) forTo See, To Take,[5] theBollingen Prize (1971), theRuth Lilly Poetry Prize (1989), and thePulitzer Prize (1991) forNear Changes.[6] She was theU.S. Poet Laureate between 1992 and 1993.[2] Despite her accolades, her career fluctuated between praise and obscurity. Her views oflove andmarriage ranged from the scathing to the optimistic. In "What I Want to Say", she wrote of love:
But in "Late Loving", she wrote:
To See, To Take (1970) was a collection of poems that gathered together three previous books and some uncollected work and won theNational Book Award for Poetry.[5] In 1981 she became a fellow in theAcademy of American Poets and then, in 1985, one of the twelve Chancellors who serve for life.[2] Collected poems,If It Be Not I (1992) included four volumes that had appeared since her first collected poems. It was published simultaneously with a new collection of poetry,Firefall.
In 1993, she was inducted into theSt. Louis Walk of Fame.[7] She was elected a Fellow of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1996.[8]She died ofbone cancer at her home inUniversity City, Missouri, on December 2, 2004, aged 83.[4]
| 1922–1950 |
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| 1951–1975 |
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| 1976–2000 |
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| 2001–2025 |
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