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 Firefall, in World Literature Today, Vol. 68, No. 2, Spring, 1994, p. 376.

[In the review below, Earnshaw provides a laudatory review of Firefall.]

Firefall refers to the nightly bonfire that park rangers used to push over the high cliff in California's Yosemite Park to entertain tourists in the valley below. Van Duyn saw the spectacle when, as a girl, she toured the West with her family. The poem which relates this experience, "Falls," contrasts the cascade of fire with the waterfalls at Niagara Falls, also seen on a family tour. She takes both fire and water as fertilizing elements in her poetic creativity. The poem is placed near the close of the collection, the poet's first since Near Changes, winner of the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for poetry. In addition to poems on Van Duyn topics (wisdom about life drawn from suburban Midwestern dailiness), Firefall...

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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