Van Duyn, Mona (Vol. 116) - John Woods (review date April 1960)
John Woods (review date April 1960)
SOURCE: "The Teeming Catalogue," in Poetry, Vol. 96, No. 1, April, 1960, pp. 47-51.
[In the following excerpt, Woods surveys some of the poems in Valentines to the Wide World.]
Mona Van Duyn appears to be a fully-engaged poet. She is not the house organ of any special lobby, but is trying on several attitudes, several voices [in Valentines to the Wide World].
About poetry she writes:
But what I find most useful is the poem. To find
some spot on the surface and then bear down until
the skin can't stand the tension and breaks under it …
Only the poem
is strong enough to make the initial rupture …
And I've never seen anything like it for making you think
that to spend your life on such old premises is a privilege.
I am sure that some of her...
[The entire page is 430 words long]
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