I have a friend who said she took a course from her years ago. At the time she seemed reserved or focused elsewhere -- that term, at least, the passion in the poems did not come out in her teaching. 'Shut with the fire passed and the fire returned,' perhaps. But she left us these poems. Here's one:
Winter Swan
It is a hollow garden, under the cloud;
Beneath the wheel a hollow earth is turned;
Within the mind the live blood shouts aloud;
Under the breast the willing blood is burned,
Shut with the fire passed and the fire returned.
But speak, you proud!
Where lies the leaf-caught world once thought abiding,
Now but a dry disarray and artifice?
Here, to the ripple cut by the cold, drifts this
Bird, the long throat bent back, the eyes in hiding.
xxx- Louise Bogan
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