Selected Poems FROM THE PUBLISHER
This generous selection of Mona Van Duyn's distinguished, award-winning work spans four decades. Beginning with her classic Valentines to the Wide World (1959), encompassing the intimate voice of Bedtime Stories (1972) and the moving Letters from a Father (1982), crowned by the life-spanning Firefall (1993), Selected Poems reacquaints us with a poet whose ear is keenly tuned to the music of nature and human conversation. In lively and varied forms, from her minimalist sonnets to her magisterial longer pieces, Van Duyn captures a multiplicity of worlds within her world, in a tone inflected by both Midwestern pragmatism and a deep metaphysical intelligence. As she contemplates the act of reading in bed, a Rhenish sculpture in the Cloisters, or the loss of her mother, the poet goes beyond context to discover consciousness: an expression of the larger ideas and emotions--finally, the art--in the smallest details of our lives.
FROM THE CRITICS
Book Magazine - Stephen Whited
Van Duyn, who was the U.S. poet laureate from 1992 to 1993, has been honored for her devotion to accessible, domestic subjects. Like most of our recent laureates, she has been influenced by the work of Robert Frost, W.H. Auden, Louise Bogan, Theodore Roethke, May Sarton and Elizabeth Bishop. This poetic tradition has continued to attract both readers and imitators. Poets whose work bears similarities with Van Duyn's—Grace Schulman, May Swenson, Maxine Kumin, Marie Howe—generally offer elegiac tributes to the common life and the natural world. This volume presents poems from eight of Van Duyn's previously published books. From the beginning of her writing career, Van Duyn demonstrated a penchant for Midwestern plain-speak. Were Oprah ever to take a chance with poets, Van Duyn would be a good bet.
Art & Photography
Book Info
