Eunice Tietjens Memorial Prize from Poetry magazine

In 1956, Mona Van Duyn received the Eunice Tietjens Memorial Prize from Poetry magazine for her sequence "Three Valentines to the Wide World," marking one of her earliest major national recognitions.[1][9] Awarded annually for work of exceptional merit, the Tietjens Prize placed Van Duyn’s poetry in the company of leading mid‑century writers and signaled her emergence beyond regional and academic circles.

The honor acknowledged the distinctive qualities that would define her career: a formalist craft, emotional complexity, and a sharp, often humorous attention to domestic and middle‑class American life.[4][5] For a woman poet working in the 1950s—when literary institutions and major magazines were still dominated by men—this prize represented a significant breach of informal barriers, granting her visibility in the nation’s premier poetry journal.[7]

The Tietjens recognition helped build the momentum that led to her first book, Valentines to the Wide World (1959), and later awards such as the Bollingen Prize, National Book Award, and Pulitzer Prize.[1][2][4] It also affirmed the seriousness of her project at a time when women’s poetic voices were often marginalized, contributing to the gradual expansion of the canon to include more women writing about family, marriage, and everyday life with intellectual rigor and technical mastery.