Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Van Duyn, Mona (Vol. 116) - Doris Earnshaw (review date Spring 1994)

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Doris Earnshaw (review date Spring 1994)

SOURCE: A review of If It Be Not I: Collected Poems 1959–1982, in World Literature Today, Vol. 68, No. 2, Spring, 1994, p. 135.

[In the following review, Earnshaw praises If It Be Not I, noting a few "shortcomings," but declaring the collected poems "rich, wise, and beautiful."]

It is of course fascinating to hear the voice of an American woman poet, born in the same decade (1920s) as Adrienne Rich and Denise Levertov, who avoids politics altogether, including the politics of feminism and of the Vietnam War. Mona Van Duyn is a heartland poet, born in Waterloo, Iowa, and living in St. Louis, whereas Rich was raised and educated in sophisticated East Coast surroundings and Levertov was raised and educated in England by her Welsh mother and Russian-Jewish/Christian father. After decades of university teaching while publishing single poems and several collections with modest...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. John Woods (review date April 1960)
   2. W. D. Snodgrass (review date Spring 1960)
   3. David Kalstone (review date 2 August 1970)
   4. Arthur Oberg (review date Winter 1973)
   5. Harvey Shapiro (review date 22 September 1973)
   6. Lorrie Goldensohn (essay date March 1978)
   7. Robert Hass (review date 5 September 1982)
   8. M. L. Rosenthal (review date 13 March 1983)
   9. Richard Lattimore (review date Spring 1983)
   10. Alfred Corn (review date October 1990)
   11. Edward Hirsch (review date 18 November 1990)
   12. Constance Hunting (essay date 1991)
   13. Liz Rosenberg (review date 11 April 1993)
   14. Robyn Selman (review date 1 July 1993)
   15. Rachel Hadas (review date 18 July 1993)
   16. Ben Howard (review date December 1993)
   17. Judith Hall (essay date Winter 1994)
   18. Doris Earnshaw (review date Spring 1994)
   19. Doris Earnshaw (review date Spring 1994)
   20. Robert B. Shaw (review date Spring 1994)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright