"I cannot believe that the inscrutable universe turns on an axis of suffering; surely the strange beauty of the world must somewhere rest on pure joy!" ~ Louise Bogan
Celebrating the joy of the world, poet Louise Marie Bogan (1897–1970) was born on this day in Livermore Falls, Maine. She studied Latin in school and developed the skill to translate feelings into words with formal elegance.
She said: "True revolutions in art restore more than they destroy."
Becoming a vibrant part of the New York City writing community, Bogan received three Guggenheim fellowships (1922, 1933, 1937) and published her first collection of poetry, Body of this Death (1923). Dark Summer (1929) and The Sleeping Fury (1937) followed.
She once observed, "What we suffer, what we endure, what we muff, what we kill, what we miss, what we are guilty of, is done by us, as individuals, in private."
Inspired by the poetry of William Butler Yeats and Rainer Maria Rilke, Bogan strived for perfection. With a dedication to excellence, her writing was concise, structured, and formal. Described as a poet's poet, she wrote with great control and lyrically addressed themes of love, language, identity, and death.
Her writing radiated truth.
The poetry critic for The New Yorker for 38 years, Bogan lived life with passion and protected her privacy. "No woman should be shamefaced in attempting, through her work, to give back to the world a portion of it's heart," she said.
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