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A Study Guide for Mona Van Duyn's "Memoir"
A Study Guide for Mona Van Duyn's "Memoir"
A Study Guide for Mona Van Duyn's "Memoir"
Ebook31 pages23 minutes

A Study Guide for Mona Van Duyn's "Memoir"

By Gale and Cengage

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A Study Guide for Mona Van Duyn's "Memoir," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Poetry for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Poetry for Students for all of your research needs.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateAug 26, 2016
ISBN9781535828468
A Study Guide for Mona Van Duyn's "Memoir"

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    A Study Guide for Mona Van Duyn's "Memoir" - Gale

    1

    Memoir

    Mona Van Duyn

    1988

    Introduction

    Mona Van Duyn first published Memoir in the summer 1988 issue of the Yale Review. Subsequently, the piece appeared in her 1990 poetry collection, Near Changes, for which Van Duyn earned the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1991. Near Changes was Van Duyn's seventh published collection of poetry. She first introduced readers to her work with her 1959 publication of Valentines to the Wide World. Since 1990, Van Duyn has published two additional collections, Firefall (1993) and If It Be Not I: Collected Poems 1959–1982 (1993).

    Like much of Van Duyn's work, Memoir is written in a strict poetic form. In this case, Van Duyn uses a form called the sestina, which is a thirteenth-century poetic form based on the number 6. As a sestina, the poem's first six stanzas are made up of six lines each, and the same six words (or a near derivative) serve as the final words in the work's first thirty-six lines. Van Duyn intentionally highlights and repeats the words ear, sound, eye, lose, words, and print throughout the work as a way to explore the idea that the printed word is an invaluable safeguard against the loss of art and poetry with the passage of time. Dedicated to Harry Ford, Van Duyn's editor, Memoir is a tribute to the editor's role in this preservation process.

    Author Biography

    Mona Van Duyn (pronounced Van Dine) was born in Waterloo, Iowa, on May 9, 1921, to Earl George and Lora (Kramer) Van Duyn. She grew up in Eldora, Iowa, a small town with approximately thirty-two hundred people. As a young girl, Van Duyn was an avid reader who developed an affinity for poetry at a young age. Despite keeping most of her poetry writing secret, she published her first poem when she was in the second

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