Mona Van Duyn

Overcoming Adversity

One of America's most respected and honored poets, Mona Van Duyn (1921 - 2004) served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 1992 to 1993. Born and raised in rural Iowa, she was drawn to literature at an early age, but her parents were unsympathetic to her literary ambitions. At Iowa State Teachers College (now the University of Northern Iowa), a sympathetic teacher encouraged her writing. She earned a master's degree from the University of Iowa, where she participated in the early years of the University's famous Writers' Workshop and met her husband, Jarvis Thurston. The couple founded Perspective: A Quarterly Review of Literature while teaching at the University of Louisville, Kentucky. They and their journal soon moved to Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, where Van Duyn would teach for much of her life. Over the years, Van Duyn won every major award in American poetry, including the Bollingen Prize, the Sandburg Prize and the National Book Award. She received a 1991 Pulitzer Prize for her collection To See, To Take. Much of her poetry is concerned with a highly nuanced view of marriage and the family. While her early work in particular presents marriage as an essential component of civilized society, To See, To Take, portrays men and women as perpetual strangers, destined to wrestle with the insoluble complexity of their relationships. This podcast was recorded at the Academy of Achievement's 1992 Summit in Las Vegas, Nevada, shortly after her appointment as Poet Laureate. In this address, she recounts her childhood love of literature, the opposition of her parents, and the encouragement she finally received from a favorite professor.