Mona Van Duyn
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Mona Jane Van Duyn (May 9, 1921 - December 2, 2004) was an American poet. She wrote the poetry collections A Time of Bees in 1964, Near Changes in 1990 and Firefall in 1993. She was the U.S. poet laureate between 1992 and 1993.
Van Duyn won every major U.S. prize for poetry, including the National Book Award, the Bollingen Prize, the Ruth Lilly Prize and the Pulitzer Prize. Despite her accolades, her career fluctuated between praise and obscurity.
Her views of love and marriage ranged from the scathing to the optimistic. In "What I Want to Say", she wrote of love:
- It is the absolute narrowing of possibilities
- and everyone, down to the last man
- dreads it
But in "Late Loving", she wrote:
- Love is finding the familiar dear
With her husband Jarvis Thurston, a professor of English literature, Van Duyn enjoyed a long association with Washington University in St. Louis. The couple previously taught at the University of Iowa. Van Duyn was a friend of poet James Merrill and was instrumental in securing his papers for the Washington University Special Collections in the mid 1960s.
She died of bone cancer, aged 83.pl:Mona Jane Van Duyn