SOURCE: "Poetry Chronicle," in The Hudson Review, Vol. 36, No. 1, Spring, 1983, pp. 210-11.

In the following excerpt, Lattimore offers praise for Letters from a Father, and Other Poems.

In her sixth book, [Letters from a Father, and Other Poems,] Mona Van Duyn writes mostly blank verse more on the order of Frost than Stevens or Aiken, but the language is a lot racier. Or it may be couplets, rhymed stanzas, even a sonnet—but whatever it is, she dishes it out with practiced casual skill. The heart of this collection is a cluster of poems from family history, about photographs, with letters and memories, with the handsome father and mother (and daughter) losing their looks and strength until "They are no longer parents. Their child is old." "Lives of the Poet" describes how our poet, newly married and in her first year of college teaching, received a letter from...