Iowa native Mona Van Duyn was born and raised in the state in which she would later obtain a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Arts in creative writing. A year after earning her Master’s degree, she married fellow classmate Jarvis Thurston. She and Thurston would briefly continue studying in Iowa, working towards their PhDs, until opportunities presented themselves in Louisville.
The couple were offered teaching positions at the University of Louisville in 1946. While there, they established “Perspective: A Quarterly of Literature and the Arts,” a literary journal they developed in 1947 that Van Duyn would continue to edit for the next two decades, even after they made the move from Louisville to Washington University in St. Louis.
In St. Louis, both Van Duyn and Thurston would establish themselves as regulars on the literary scene. Their St. Louis-based circle of friends included myriad poets, novelists, and critics who continued to push and inspire each other throughout their careers. Van Duyn’s career spanned an impressive six decades, over the course of which she would win every major poetry prize in the United States.
In 1971, Van Duyn won The Booker Award for “To See, To Take.” This kicked off an impressive three decades of award-winning: she also won The Bollingen Prize in 1971, The Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize in 1989, and the Pulitzer Prize in 1991. These awards clearer a path to her being named Poet Laureate of the United States in 1992-3—the first female to hold that title.
While it was clear she possessed impressive talent, her poetry was often met with harsh criticism, especially due to her scathing views of love and marriage. Van Duyn once said, "I believe that good poetry can be as ornate as a cathedral or as bare as a pottingshed, as long as it confronts the self with honesty and fullness.” While her truth may have made some feel uncomfortable, it earned her accolades and a permanent place in America’s literary history.