LOUISE BOGAN

POETS DETAILS
Louise Bogan was an American poet. She was appointed the fourth Poet
Laureate to the Library of Congress in 1945. As poetry editor of The New
Yorker magazine for nearly 40 years, Bogan played a major role in
shaping mainstream po
Born: 11 Aug 1897 Livermore Falls, Maine
Died: 04 Feb 1970 New York City, New York
Education: Boston University (1915 - 1916) Boston Latin Academy(1910
- 1915)
Awards: United States Poet Laureate (1945) Bollingen Prize (1955)
Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts, US & Canada (1933)
Nominations: National Book Award for Poetry (1955)
1923: She returned to New York City and published her first book of
poetry, Body of This Death: Poems, in 1923, meeting that year the poet
and novelist Raymond Holden.
1935: In a letter to Edmund Wilson, she detailed a raucous affair that she
and the yet-unpublished Roethke carried on in 1935, during the time
between his expulsion from Lafayette College and his return to Michigan.
1945: She was appointed the fourth Poet Laureate to the Library of
Congress in 1945.
1945: Louise Bogan was awarded United States Poet Laureate in 1945.

Relevant pictures which help to link with the poem
Women in different working areas
Picture to relate with the poem
POEM : WOMEN
Women have no wilderness in them,
They are provident instead,
Content in the tight hot cell of their hearts
To eat dusty bread.

They do not see cattle cropping red winter grass,
They do not hear
Snow water going down under culverts
Shallow and clear.

They wait, when they should turn to journeys,
They stiffen, when they should bend.
They use against themselves that benevolence
To which no man is friend.

They cannot think of so many crops to a field
Or of clean wood cleft by an axe.
Their love is an eager meaninglessness
Too tense or too lax.

They hear in any whisper that speaks to them
A shout and a cry.
As like as not, when they take life over their door-sill
They should let it go by.

Women by Louise Bogan
FORM OF THE POEM
DESCRIPTION OF THE POEM
EXPLANATION OF THE POEM