[W.F. Lantry]

Her voice, here and here.

Also, here.

Thanks,

Bill

[Cally Conan-Davies]

Janice,

The poem you posted - 'Medusa" - really really got to me! I know it, do you understand? She has exquisite control of the language for these passionate states she writes about. It's like watching an expert rider on a wild horse. Her language has stillness and intensity at the same time. I love it.

Thank you for making me aware of it.

Cally

[Tim Murphy]

I have revered Bogan for a long time. She didn't write much, but she wrote brilliantly. As Alicia says of Housman, she is a "major, minor poet." I particularly love her trimeters, but then, I would!

[John Riley]

I took The Blue Estuaries off the shelf and can't resist posting one more.


Night

The cold remote islands
And the blue estuaries
Where what breathes, breathes
The restless wind of the inlets,
And what drinks, drinks
The incoming tide;

Where shell and weed
Wait upon the salt wash of the sea,
And the clear nights of stars
Swing their lights westward
To set behind the land;

Where the pulse clinging to the rocks
Renews itself forever;
Where, again on cloudless nights,
The water reflects
The firmament’s partial setting;

—O remember
In your narrowing dark hours
That more things move
Than blood in the heart.

[Mary Meriam]

Bill, thanks for those links. I listened to all three and especially liked the one from the Poetry Foundation. Isn't it fascinating how a whole poet's life can be reduced to a few "sound bites"? She struggled with depression. She turned down the Radcliffe scholarship. She was married twice.

John, thanks for "Night" - it's just gorgeous!!!!

Tim, do you have a favorite poem of hers?

[David Rosenthal]

Mary,

Welcome to the fan club. File her under "Overlooked and Underrated." I am always a sucker for short ditties:



THE FRIGHTENED MAN

In fear of the rich mouth
I kissed the thin,--
Even that was a trap
To snare me in.

Even she, so long
The frail, the scentless,
Is become strong,
And proves relentless.

O, forget her praise,
And how I sought her
Through a hazardous maze
By shafted water.





KNOWLEDGE

Now that I know
How passion warms little
Of flesh in the mould,
And treasure is brittle,--

I'll lie here and learn
How, over their ground
Trees make a long shadow
And a light sound.



David R.

[Andrew Frisardi]

I knew very little about Bogan, and now I'm a fan too. Thanks for starting this thread, Mary.

Has anyone read Bogan’s biography? I saw in Wikipedia that it won a Pulitzer. I’d like to read it. Bogan came from poverty and all kinds of adversity, and yet accomplished so much. What a spirit.

I saw that she spent a few years in Vienna in the 1920s, but Wiki doesn’t say what she did there. Does anyone know?

I’d also like to read more of her writings on poetry. I found this article by her on Yeats, from the Atlantic Monthly in 1938.

[Mary Meriam]

Fantastic, David, thanks!

Andrew, according to Wiki, she was the poetry reviewer at the New Yorker for 38 years. Which means, anyone with a subscription can find her reviews in their online archive. I intend to do a search.

Not only was it difficult being a female poet in the 30s and 40s, but her lower-middle-class Irish background and limited education also brought on much ambivalence and contradiction for Louise Bogan. She even refused to review women poets in her early career and stated, "I have found from bitter experience that one woman poet is at a disadvantage in reviewing another, if the review be not laudatory."

Later that same night.....
Not only does she delightfully review Betjeman in the September 13, 1947, issue, she reviews two poets: Mr. Coxe and Miss Garrigue. Her last sentence: "Talented young Americans are not yet able to take things easy enough, to write poems that smell less of the lamp and of the seminar than of what, for lack of a better word, we must call life." I also see that the NYer published Bogan's poems.

[John Riley]

I read the biography a few years back and it is very good. One of the challenges apparently is that she was not popular with some feminist critics because of her poem "Woman" and the biographer does a good job of dealing with that. She wrote little poetry the last decades of her life and settled in as a reviewer at the New Yorker. There is a selection of her nonfiction and I think her letters are out there as well.

A little piece of gossip is that she was apparently an "older woman" in Roethke's life at one point and had a big influence on his work. I think she was also influential in popularizing Rilke in the states through her New Yorker column.

Best,
John

[Janice D. Soderling]

I have the book John refers to. the title is "A Poet's Prose: Selected Writings of Louise Bogan". It consists of fiction, journals and memoir, letters, criticism, some uncollected poems and some previously unpublished poems.

Remember to burn everything private you don't want to leave for the general public. The hard part is the timing.