Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Van Duyn, Mona (Vol. 116) - M. L. Rosenthal (review date 13 March 1983)

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M. L. Rosenthal (review date 13 March 1983)

SOURCE: "A Common Sadness," in New York Times Book Review, Vol. 88, March 13, 1983, p. 6.

[In the following review, Rosenthal provides a laudatory assessment of Letters from A Father, and Other Poems.]

Mona Van Duyn seems a naturally ebullient sort, a humorous love-welcomer who sturdily overbears disgust, resentment and the tears of things. Her style is anecdotal and expansive….

Mona Van Duyn is such an engaging spirit a reader almost forgets the dark awareness with which she copes. Her title poem, "Letters From a Father," starts her book off with an epistolary tale that has a happy ending—that is, for the time being. It consists of six successive "letters" from a small-town, country-bred, octogenarian father to his poet daughter. These highly colloquial letters, compressed and adapted to a loose line of five or six stresses and a pattern of alternating rhymes and half-rhymes, are...

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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