Van Duyn, Mona

Van Duyn, Mona( 1921– ),
Poet Laureate of the U.S., 1992–93. Van Duyn was born and educated in Iowa. She was a lecturer at Washington University, St. Louis (1950–67). Van Duyn constructs her poems in strict forms, with subjects ranging from romantic love to the grittily diurnal. Her volumes are Valentines to the Wide World (1959), To See, To Take (1970), Merciful Disguises (1973),Letters from a Father (1982), Near Changes (1990), and Firefall (1993). If It Be Not I: Collected Poems 1959–1982 (1992) prints all of her earlier work.