1968: Van Duyn wins first prize in the Borestone Mountain Poetry Awards, underscoring national recognition of her poems in contemporary literary circles.
In 1968, Mona Van Duyn won first prize in the Borestone Mountain Poetry Awards, a respected annual anthology series that highlighted notable poems published in magazines and journals.[9] The award, selected from a broad field of contemporary work, signaled that her poetry was not only admired by individual editors but also judged outstanding in national competition.
Receiving first prize was particularly meaningful because Borestone Mountain anthologies were used in classrooms and by general readers as indicators of the year’s best poetry, thereby amplifying her reach beyond specialist audiences. For Van Duyn, whose poems often explored the complex emotional texture of everyday domestic life, this visibility helped establish those subjects as central rather than peripheral to modern poetry.[5][7]
The award arrived alongside other 1968 honors—the Harriet Monroe and Hart Crane awards—marking a watershed moment in her ascent to prominence.[1][9] This cluster of recognition set the stage for major book‑length prizes in the next decade, including the Bollingen Prize and National Book Award.[2][4] It demonstrates how anthology and magazine prizes functioned as important stepping stones in the career of a woman poet navigating a largely male‑dominated literary establishment.