SOURCE: A review of If It Be Not I: Collected Poems 1959–1982, in World Literature Today, Vol. 68, No. 2, Spring, 1994, p. 135.

In the following review, Earnshaw praises If It Be Not I, noting a few "shortcomings," but declaring the collected poems "rich, wise, and beautiful."

It is of course fascinating to hear the voice of an American woman poet, born in the same decade (1920s) as Adrienne Rich and Denise Levertov, who avoids politics altogether, including the politics of feminism and of the Vietnam War. Mona Van Duyn is a heartland poet, born in Waterloo, Iowa, and living in St. Louis, whereas Rich was raised and educated in sophisticated East Coast surroundings and Levertov was raised and educated in England by her Welsh mother and Russian-Jewish/Christian father. After decades of university teaching while publishing single poems and several collections with modest circulation, Van Duyn gained a wider audience when...