SOURCE: "Methods of Transport," in Parnassus, Vol. 16, No. 2, pp. 377-88.

In this excerpt, Hunting investigates and applauds the energy and techniques in Life Sentence.

Tietjens, Monroe, Bullis, Bollingen, Loines, Shelley, Crane, Lilly—what a long train of prizes and awards for the engine of poetry to pull! During a distinguished career, Mona Van Duyn has won them all. As well, she is a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters and a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. Then there are the fellowships and the honorary degrees…. A very long train indeed, traveling a steady track through a reliable landscape. For thirty years we have been privileged to watch its progress.

Now, rushing from another horizon, around a curve of history, suddenly appears on a quite different track a locomotive so powerful, so sweeping in speed and force, as to remind one of an iron...