SOURCE: A review of Firefall, in World Literature Today, Vol. 68, No. 2, Spring, 1994, p. 376.

In the review below, Earnshaw provides a laudatory review of Firefall.

Firefall refers to the nightly bonfire that park rangers used to push over the high cliff in California's Yosemite Park to entertain tourists in the valley below. Van Duyn saw the spectacle when, as a girl, she toured the West with her family. The poem which relates this experience, "Falls," contrasts the cascade of fire with the waterfalls at Niagara Falls, also seen on a family tour. She takes both fire and water as fertilizing elements in her poetic creativity. The poem is placed near the close of the collection, the poet's first since Near Changes, winner of the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for poetry. In addition to poems on Van Duyn topics (wisdom about life drawn from suburban Midwestern dailiness), Firefall contains a series of...