Van Duyn, << van dyn, >> Mona (1921-2004), an American poet, won the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for poetry for Near Changes (1990). She also served as the poet laureate of the United States in 1992 and 1993. Van Duyn wrote in a colloquial style. Many of her poems explore or use the imagery of everyday experiences and familiar subjects, such as married love and life in the city or suburbs. She often chose emotional themes but avoided sentimentality, as in poems about her aging parents in Letters from a Father and Other Poems (1982).
Mona Jane Van Duyn was born on May 9, 1921, in Waterloo, Iowa. In 1942, she received a B.A. degree from Iowa State Teachers College (now the University of Northern Iowa). She earned an M.A. from the University of Iowa in 1943. Van Duyn was a university instructor, consultant, and poet-in-residence. She served as a lecturer in English at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, from 1950 to 1967. Van Duyn’s first book of poetry was Valentines to the Wide World (1959). Her first six volumes of verse were collected in If It Be Not I (1993). Her Selected Poems was published in 2002. Van Duyn died on Dec. 2, 2004.
