Vox Populi
A curated webspace for Poetry, Politics, and Nature with over 6,000,000 visitors since 2014 and over 9,000 archived posts.
Louise Bogan: Cassandra
To me, one silly task is like another.
I bare the shambling tricks of lust and pride.
This flesh will never give a child its mother,—
Song, like a wing, tears through my breast, my side,
And madness chooses out my voice again,
Again. I am the chosen no hand saves:
The shrieking heaven lifted over men,
Not the dumb earth, wherein they set their graves.
~~~~
From Collected Poems of Louise Bogan 1923 – 1953 (Noonday Press, 1956). Included in Vox Populi for noncommercial educational purposes only.
Louise Bogan (1897 – 1970) was appointed the fourth Poet Laureate to the Library of Congress in 1945, and was the first woman to hold this title. Throughout her life she wrote poetry, fiction, and criticism, and became the regular poetry reviewer for The New Yorker. Dictionary of Literary Biography contributor Brett C. Millier described her as “one of the finest lyric poets America has produced.” He said, “the fact that she was a woman and that she defended formal, lyric poetry in an age of expansive experimentation made evaluation of her work, until quite recently, somewhat condescending.”
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Those 2 “again” — in such a short poem: such weight!
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Yes, Bogan travels far in a short space.
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What a fine poem. How just the order of words makes all the difference. How this poems feels written and revisited before it was declared ‘fit to be seen’ by other eyes: “This flesh will never give a child its mother,—” so small the change, but so powerful. What a fine poet.
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Yes, she was a fine poet. Her poems can be read and reread.
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Oh, Mike, what a service you do to bring back someone like Bogan! What a poem! What a writer! I vividly remember being in grad school and speaking up for her. The usual response was as if I had pulled out a coloring book and started filling in the drawings.
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Bogan wrote elegant poems, and she didn’t have any tolerance for the excesses of modernism.
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My God!
What a poem.
I was just at a Rembrandt show in West Palm Beach early in the week, 21 of them on display among a whole selection of works from his students and followers. But have I ever seen that many Rembrandt paintings at once before?
I drove home with that feeling I have this moment
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Thanks, Sean. Your comments here are always so infused with energy and inspiration!
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