SOURCE: "The Collected Mona Van Duyn," in Chicago Tribune Books, April 11, 1993, pp. 6-7.

In the following review, Rosenberg applauds Van Duyn's abilities as a poet, and praises If It Be Not I, but declares that Firefall "is not up to [Van Duyn's own best standards."]

It's difficult to call "neglected" a poet who has won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award and the Bollingen Prize and who is, currently, Poet Laureate of the United States. Yet for all that, Mona Van Duyn is perhaps more widely known than widely read, and that is a form of neglect that deprives us all. Nearly every poem in the generous collection If It Be Not I has at least one line of extraordinary beauty or of wisdom—often both—and what more dare one hope for from any one volume of poetry?

Van Duyn possesses both wit and passion, restraint...