Louise Bogan

Louise Bogan Poems

O God, in the dream the terrible horse began
To paw at the air, and make for me with his blows,
Fear kept for thirty-five years poured through his mane,
And retribution equally old, or nearly, breathed through his nose.
...

Up from the bronze, I saw
Water without a flaw
Rush to its rest in air,
Reach to its rest, and fall.
...

All night the cocks crew, under a moon like day,
And I, in the cage of sleep, on a stranger's breast,
Shed tears, like a task not to be put away---
In the false light, false grief in my happy bed,
...

Now that I have your face by heart, I look
Less at its features than its darkening frame
Where quince and melon, yellow as young flame,
Lie with quilled dahlias and the shepherd's crook.
...

It is yourself you seek
In a long rage,
Scanning through light and darkness
Mirrors, the page,
...

I’ve come to give you fruit from out my orchard,
Of wide report.
I have trees there that bear me many apples.
Of every sort:
...

The dark is thrown
Back from the brightness, like hair
Cast over a shoulder.
I am alone,
...

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

She has no need to fear the fall
Of harvest from the laddered reach
Of orchards, nor the tide gone ebbing
From the steep beach.
...

Come, let us tell the weeds in ditches
How we are poor, who once had riches,
And lie out in the sparse and sodden
Pastures that the cows have trodden,
...

11.

I had come to the house, in a cave of trees,
Facing a sheer sky.
Everything moved, -- a bell hung ready to strike,
Sun and reflection wheeled by.
...

Men loved wholly beyond wisdom
Have the staff without the banner.
Like a fire in a dry thicket
Rising within women's eyes
...

I burned my life, that I might find
A passion wholly of the mind,
Thought divorced from eye and bone,
Ecstasy come to breath alone.
...

14.

Women have no wilderness in them,
They are provident instead,
Content in the tight hot cell of their hearts
To eat dusty bread.
...

She has attained the permanence
She dreamed of, where old stones lie sunning.
Untended stalks blow over her
Even and swift, like young men running.
...

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

When beauty breaks and falls asunder
I feel no grief for it, but wonder.
When love, like a frail shell, lies broken,
I keep no chip of it for token.
...

18.

Since you would claim the sources of my thought
Recall the meshes whence it sprang unlimed,
The reedy traps which other hands have times
To close upon it. Conjure up the hot
...

You have put your two hands upon me, and your mouth,
You have said my name as a prayer.
Here where trees are planted by the water
I have watched your eyes, cleansed from regret,
...

20.

This youth too long has heard the break
Of waters in a land of change.
He goes to see what suns can make
From soil more indurate and strange.
...

Louise Bogan Biography

Born in Livermore Falls, Maine, in 1897. She attended Boston Girls' Latin School and spent one year at Boston University. She married in 1916 and was widowed in 1920. In 1925, she married her second husband, the poet Raymond Holden, whom she divorced in 1937. Her poems were published in the New Republic, the Nation, Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, Scribner's and Atlantic Monthly. For thirty-eight years, she reviewed poetry for The New Yorker. Bogan found the confessional poetry of Robert Lowell and John Berryman distasteful and self-indulgent. With the poets whose work she admired, however, such as Theodore Roethke, she was extremely supportive and encouraging. She was reclusive and disliked talking about herself, and for that reason details are scarce regarding her private life. The majority of her poetry was written in the earlier half of her life when she published Body of This Death (1923) and Dark Summer (1929) and The Sleeping Fury (1937). She subsequently published volumes of her collected verse, and The Blue Estuaries: Poems 1923-1968, an overview of her life's work in poetry. Her ability is unique in its strict adherence to lyrical forms, while maintaining a high emotional pitch: she was preoccupied with exploring the perpetual disparity of heart and mind. She died in New York City in 1970.)

The Best Poem Of Louise Bogan

The Dream

O God, in the dream the terrible horse began
To paw at the air, and make for me with his blows,
Fear kept for thirty-five years poured through his mane,
And retribution equally old, or nearly, breathed through his nose.

Coward complete, I lay and wept on the ground
When some strong creature appeared, and leapt for the rein.
Another woman, as I lay half in a swound
Leapt in the air, and clutched at the leather and chain.

Give him, she said, something of yours as a charm.
Throw him, she said, some poor thing you alone claim.
No, no, I cried, he hates me; he is out for harm,
And whether I yield or not, it is all the same.

But, like a lion in a legend, when I flung the glove
Pulled from my sweating, my cold right hand;
The terrible beast, that no one may understand,
Came to my side, and put down his head in love.

Louise Bogan Comments

i have no name 24 February 2020

i think that she is a really good writer

2 0 Reply
Peter garland 16 August 2019

I had a Socrates-like teacher who knew Ms. Bogan. He gave me Williams' Little Treasury of Modern Poetry which has a " botched photo" of Bogan in it, and some of her poetry. I thank my teacher.

3 0 Reply
Oone Tattered 08 April 2014

Last Hill in a Vista, I enjoyed this poem about nature and may come to read more of this ladies work,

6 0 Reply
Joe Distefano 22 August 2006

Re Louise Bogan: Mary Gordon, in her essay 'Getting There from Here' (republished in Gordon's 1991 book 'Good Boys and Dead Girls and Other Essays' quotes a Gordon poem, 'Saint Christopher', in its entirety. A quick online search appears to show that a manuscript of this poem is included in a list of Bogan's papers maintained at Georgetown University. But the poem does not appear to be in Poemhunter's 'All Poems' list for Bogan. Can you add it? Did Bogan write other poems about saints? Thanks, Joseph N. DiStefano, Philadelphia distefano251@hotmail.com

4 2 Reply

Louise Bogan Quotes

Because language is the carrier of ideas, it is easy to believe that it should be very little else than such a carrier.

But childhood prolonged, cannot remain a fairyland. It becomes a hell.

The intellectual is a middle-class product; if he is not born into the class he must soon insert himself into it, in order to exist. He is the fine nervous flower of the bourgeoisie.

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