Mona Van Duyn, a poet from St. Louis who has won most of the nation's top literary awards, has been named by the Library of Congress as the nation's first female poet laureate.
But she says she is going to bury that weighty but lustrous title in the back of her mind "because it makes me feel top heavy."She said she will instead emphasize the position's older and more prosaic title, "Consultant in Poetry" at the Library of Congress.
Van Duyn said she was "terribly pleased and terribly flattered" to be offered the position.
But she made clear that she believes it was time a woman was given that distinction.
Since the poet laureate title was added to the poetry consultant's job description in 1986, five male poets have held it. They are Robert Penn Warren, Richard Wilbur, Howard Nemerov, Mark Strand and the most recent, Russian immigrant Joseph Brodsky.