Author: Michael Burns

Publisher: University of Arkansas Press

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 172

ISBN-13: 9781610751278

Mona van Dyun is a former U.S. poet laureate (1992) and winner of a Pulitzer Prize (1991). To help broaden and inform our understanding of her work, the editor of this volume has gathered together ten essays, a poem, and a biographical sketch, as well as the author's own laureate address to the Library of Congress. The first section of this collection include tributes by other poets that elucidate the special effect Van Duyn's poetry has had on their work and thought, as well as a poem that extols the qualities of her poems and places those qualities within her contempoarary scene. The second section contains eight essays exploring aspects as varied as Van Duyn's penchant for particularity, her remarkable ability to rediscover for us the strangeness of everyday living, and her elegant style, fluid in both free verse and form. The final section opens with Van Duyn's overview of the state of poetry in America at the close of the twentieth century, and a short narrative history of her literary career.