The Selected Letters of Mark Van Doren

by Mark van Doren

Van Doren, Mark

344 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 1987

About the author

Mark van Doren was an American poet, writer and critic. He was a scholar and a professor of English at Columbia University for nearly 40 years, where he inspired a generation of influential writers and thinkers including Thomas Merton, Robert Lax, John Berryman, Whittaker Chambers, and Beat Generation writers such as Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. He won the 1940 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Collected Poems 1922–1938 and he was literary editor of The Nation, in New York City (1924–1928), and its film critic, 1935 to 1938.

Reviews

[Jonathan Dye · Rating 4 out of 5]

There were definitely more than a few poems in this collection that weren't terribly special... but scattered in among them are some absolute gems, including "Praise Doubt" and "Is Now." The whole book is worth it for those two alone.