Van Duyn, Mona (Vol. 7) | Van Duyn, Mona 1921–
Van Duyn, Mona 1921–
Mona Van Duyn is an award-winning American poet, a critic, and a short story writer whose work has been called homey and sophisticated, colloquial and formal, sincere and witty, charming and tough. In her poetry, deceptively simple themes are handled with intelligence and skill. (See also Contemporary Authors, Vols. 9-12, rev. ed.)
To See, To Take is arrival. It may not be a given judge's kind of poetry (making no attempt to be all things to all readers), but its quality only the perverse would doubt. It is poetry of an immense voltage; impatient (though not of technique), salty as tears or seawater, sorrowful, and terribly funny—"terribly" being the just word.
In point of fact, Miss Van Duyn's work is not best served by a straight-through reading of her book; the emotional impact of the poems piled on each other blunts sensibility. They are best realized read in isolation one from another. After...
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