Louise Bogan Paul Ramsey
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Masthead Logo The Iowa Review Volume 1 Article 36 Issue 3 Summer 1970 Louise Bogan Paul Ramsey Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.uiowa.edu/iowareview Part of the Creative Writing Commons Recommended Citation Ramsey, Paul. "Louise Bogan." The Iowa Review 1.3 (1970): 116-124. Web. Available at: https://doi.org/10.17077/0021-065X.1105 This Contents is brought to you for free and open access by Iowa Research Online. It has been accepted for inclusion in The oI wa Review by an authorized administrator of Iowa Research Online. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Louise Bogan Paul Ramsey a Louise Bogan is great lyric poet. Greatness in is to poetry hard discuss, especially in the lyric. It is comparatively to show that is a easy Bogan very good poet: powerful in feeling, surprising and chaste in diction, strong in structure, masterly in imagery and rhythm, important in but in the is so as themes; greatness lyric impact and profundity and simple almost to The own defy scrutiny. thing happens; the note is struck; in Bogan's the "terrible . Music in the hill" we language / granite sounds, and there are, where her arrive time and poems again. are to Lyrics be judged by depth and perfecting, not range, yet the reach of her work is more its in than slightness quantity might suggest. She writes mostly on the traditional no lyric subjects, themselves comprising small range, of love, time, passion, grief, nature, death, music, stoicism, limitation, art (not overmuch), dreams. some memory, She also has done very fine light verse with its own and special quartz wryness, manages to have something to say of psychiatrists, malevolent cocktail parties, Jonathan Swift, St. Christopher. It is the saint who is most a the stranger. He is tough and able (arrived from an sort fresco), infrequent of visitor to her poems. Religion is almost wholly in her in lacking work, except hints, including the brilliant but puzzling hints of the near verse of "I Saw light Eternity," and the spirits who do appear ("Spir it's "The are ones. an Song," Daemon") dark Perhaps the lack is ingredient in the grief which persistently and profoundly underdwells her poems. Her talent is I no so unique ending poems. know other poet who ends many so well. Her startle and in most poems endings compose, of the poems I discuss, and in at least these others: "Betrothed," "Come Break with Time," "The Fright ened "The "To Be on the and Man," "Kept," "Late," Romantic," Sung Water," "Winter Swan." Her are rhythms brilliant, unique, and work in a variety of kinds: the short-line free verse of "The Dragonfly"; the free verse, varied in line length, often near or in of rising rhythm, "Summer Wish"; the mostly rising rhythm with five strong stresses of "Didactic one of her best the free Piece," poems; long-line verse, different in two quite the poems, of "Baroque Comment" and "After the Persian"; the of "Train special falling rhythms Tune"; and her "Poem in Prose," mostly, its in with some despite title, rising rhythm counterposing with falling rhythms. These all done show a unusual of metrical poems, well, very range accomplish it is no ment, but accident that her most powerful poems are work in which, in Theodore Roethke's words about these poems, the "ground beat of the great 116 University of Iowa is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve, and extend access to The Iowa Review ® www.jstor.org can verse tradition be heard." The great tradition in English since the late six teenth is and Roethke's words are century accentual-syllabics, primarily iambics, well chosen: some of her best are and some are poems accentual-syllabic, near, near enough for her pulsing variations (especially the pressure of grouped, strong to be heard as from the norm. accents) changes The tradition is heard in other than in and ways metrical, diction, image, com thought, yet always heard afresh. She does not violate the dignity of the or monplace by self-indulgent attitudes freakish privacies, yet has something distinct to say. She can even write about a rare as in the greatly emotion, achievement, superb "Men Loved Wholly Beyond Wisdom": Men loved wholly beyond wisdom Have the staff without the banner. a a Like fire in dry thicket Rising within women's eyes Is the love men must return. so subtle and Heart, now, trembling, What a marvel to be wise, To love never in this manner! To be quiet in the fern a Like thing gone dead and still, Listening to the prisoned cricket Shake its terrible, dissembling Music in the granite hill. The poem says that passion is destructive and frustration terrible and fear ful. These are known in sonnets known with truths, yet only Shakespeare's fiercer precision than here. The precision is reached by the images and the The visions and tensions tell us what is what is felt is the rhythms. felt; subject of the poem. Thus the poem is new knowledge of a very important kind. Of the the staff without the banner is and a moment's images just potent, requiring an reflection. The other images have immediately seen propriety yet lead to far reaches of feeling: fire, dry thickets, fern, prison, granite. a The poem is, in logical shape, dilemma. A disjunction is offered, this or that, or each alternative leading to the tragic. The poem does not say imply whether other alternatives but means?and in its sense of exist, surely says profound of exists in resolution of human closure, completeness?there tragedy any sexuality, a truth of moral great importance. the is as are several of her It is the one Metrically poem magnificent, poems. some poem I shall discuss in metrical detail. The principles involved apply to are near norms. other poems of hers which traditional This poem stays within hear ing distance of the accentual-syllabic and turns to iambics in the last verse. The variations are more than would occur in more traditional meters but still are heard as variations. To move further from those as much modern expectancies, 117 Criticism free verse is to lose the of across near-iambic does, strength, strength vibrancy norm. The of the is and the verses scan the pattern poem rising trimeter, following vv. 13. The first line scans as trochee trochee traditionally: 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10, iamb but the effect is not of a because of the trochee, falling line, comparative of "loved" and because an iambic substitution breaks a trochaic strength pattern more a an iambic back much than trochaic substitution breaks pattern. Shifting and forth from rising to falling rhythm, and grouping strong stresses together in are the two means which she most varies often unusual ways, by frequently from the standard procedures of accentual-syllabic. The bacchiac (light followed two a most unusual foot in occurs often in by strongs), English verse, enough her to be a feature. Several times in her the bacchiac is poetry singular poems correct in the and the more often occurs when some other scansion, grouping occurs verse scansion would apply. It in eight, of which the best scansion is bacchiac iamb iamb feminine ending (others, acceptable foot by foot, would violate the trimeter pattern). The sixth line scans as trochees, with iambic movement between the commas; the next to last verse scans as with after the straight trochees, rocking rhythm comma. verse The last begins falling but turns back to resolving iambs; its shape, iambic with trochee in the first place, is traditional. The struggle against the norm subsides; what is sounded, sounds. are a Such rhythms empowered by control that subtilizes intense feeling, by that extends and renews and bear a real to the passion form, analogy subject of the the contrast the restraint and The poem; of, struggle between, passion. or in a of "Ad Castitatem" subject appears directly indirectly number her poems. a deals directly with the theme. It is good poem, well structured (parallel in vocations with nice distinctions and some narrative and beautiful in progress) in the "a breeze of flame." The are imagery, especially unforgettable rhythms delicate but short-line free verse and iambics without comparatively lax, mixing the intensities the kinds can have. achieving separately "The Alchemist" is about the of the mind in with the passion struggle passion of the flesh. The is in strict iambic some poem tetrameter, except for truncated truncated iambic tetrameter itself an traditional lines, being important measure; and once the are too mimetic again rhythmical changes intense, perhaps intensely in "ceased its sudden thresh." The poem is about the failure of the will to govern passion, yet displays, in opposition to that theme, will governing passion to a continued which is the Most single majestic poetic metaphor poem. poems?they are or legion nowadays?about the impossibility of the control understanding of our with more than written experience are, consistency Bogan's poem displays, in lax and disordered and but are for the same reason much in styles rhythms, ferior to Bogan's poems. The view of the is and at least poem stoic, anti-rational, pessimistic, approaches physicalism. If "flesh" is not the sole reality, it is the controlling one, and the mind submits. Since I believe that all four of these views have something seriously with admiration needs It will not do to wrong them, my explaining. separate 118 aesthetics and since one is moved the attitudes belief, responds to, by, expressed in and nor through the forms, will it (simply) do to appeal to "imaginative patterns of or the like as for one some experience" against belief, since, thing, imaginative of are more and more in accord with than patterns experience moving reality that themselves can be as better and others, is, imaginative patterns judged worse.