Masthead Logo The Iowa Review Volume 1 Article 36 Issue 3 Summer

1970 Louise Bogan Paul Ramsey

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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 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 '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. For a second to insist that we are moved in thing, poems by imaginative of under or across beliefs is to that such are patterns experience imply patterns more valid than the beliefs and that to be consistent one should reject the be liefs. Tolerance becomes a and there are in belief monism, logical problems which neither nor rhetoric can dissolve. politeness

What validates the is its but and seen. poem truth, partial relevant, deeply Passion is not all can be can powerful; controlled; reasonings fail; experience be grim and must be met honestly. That is not all there is to say; but there is that much to as this and other of her show. say, poem poems beautifully

Nor is she here or a truth. The al offering, necessarily exemplifying, general in one a chemist the poem is (one individual) who seeks passion of the mind and finds unmysterious flesh. Others may successfully go beyond the submission to passion, for instance the speaker in "Knowledge," who knows the limits of and its seeks to learn and finds in the passion treasures, beyond passion poem's success an which the self. experience goes beyond

is each verse the verse in "Knowledge" over-structured, paralleling corresponding the other stanza, but the parallelism does strengthen the impact of the last two "Trees make a shadow And a sound." In these verses the yerses long / light richness of and the curious of accent scansion quantity grouping (the simplest of the next-to-last verse is trochee bacchiac feminine abet the cre ending) ation of the physical, literal, perfected ending which is the knowledge the poem of and speaks seeks.

From the Mind" turns from the of nature to the "Henceforth, perception strange ness of the mind's one reflection of the world. It is of her best known poems, and remains one of favorites the second stanza. Poor is my despite poor writing rare in in fact she is one of the most consistent in this very Bogan's work; poets since and but the second stanza of the is respect Campion Herrick; poem crudely a written and has bad confusion caused by syntax. In "joy you thought" the joy in from the tongue is meaning other than the powerful joy of youth?the differ ence is the of the point stanza?but the syntax identifies them, and the confusion the at times more in his thick damages comparison. Shakespeare says syntactical ets than could and in "Didactic Piece" the simple syntax obtain; Bogan's syntax of the first stanza, especially of the last verse in it, is dislocated or else very does not for me the emotional force of the Here the clumsy, yet damage passage. does because less and more confused than she syntax harm, Bogan says something meant. The last three verses of the stanza are with some heavy-handed clich?s, overstressed alliteration. The first is stanza, however, well written and of high generalizing power, and the last two stanzas are one most of the perfectly modulated analogies in English

119 Criticism poetry. The image is not phenomenological, though it could have been pushed that since what one hears in a shell is one's not the way easily enough, blood, the has no hint of that. The mind's view of is sea; but poem experience strange, distant, and modified by emotion and memory, but the line to reality is still even a there; the echo is of truth. What is true is truly loved, at distance. moves Love in grief and dreams, deeply, darkly, in many of her poems; her themes mix there. "I said out of "Second as less sleeping," says Song," explicitly comes or say her poems often. What from descends to sleeping is lucid and other. "Second is a delicate farewell to whose is crossed Song" passion delicacy the "Black black The be or or by salt, provender." phrase may vaginal, anal, for all I know or can but to so is not to the force of prove neither; say explain the since share such the of phrase, (presumably) many phrases sources; power the remains incalculable. Its force in the comes in some phrase literally poem as were own part from its unexpectedness in context, though she applying her rule in "Sub Contra" that notes should be "delicate and involute" but "Let there root can sound from music's / One note rage understand."

She asks of wine in "To Wine." to offer "All that is worth / Grief. Give that beat again." Grief is in the strength of her dreams. Dreams open on reality that a the day does not reckon, reality of the mind and, as she hints once in while, In her criticism she is sometimes for the in art or perhaps beyond. untrammeled modernism for its of the but in her sexuality, celebrating freeing unconscious; verse she never loses touch with mind's and form's lucidities even when sounding the murmurous of the undernotes. A of severe a kingdom touch conscience, passion for truth without pretension, a vested memory (I like to think) of the native to a rockscape of her Maine, keep her center where extremes meet and irradiate each other.

. . ." is about It "Come, Sleep (spaced periods hers) dreaming. in fresh and concise describes, magnificently phrases, bee, ant, whale, palm, flower, asks whether : grass; they dream; replies

in the corridor Surely, whispers glassy Never trouble their dream. Never, for them, the dark turreted house reflects itself In the depthless stream. stream is The of the mind's depth and it may be deeper. Since the stream is not to be we cannot how far it in or the depth-less, measured, say goes beyond mind. The shades of voice are haunted reflective of their utterance, meaning; yet the house of the poem iswell built.

Two of her best known are poems, "The Dream" and "The Sleeping Fury," accounts of and "Medusa" is a retold a imagined dreams, myth, very like dream. "The Dream" and "The well are success Sleeping Fury," though very done, less ful and less dreamlike for me than other poems in which dreams flash in or cross. the of narrative the conscious of Perhaps clarity development, visibility

120 Freudian or the not earned reversals in those meanings, quite persuasively get or in mine. poems' way,

"Medusa" its motion in and of her perfects stillness, becoming image example Good are active steadier in and lyrics. lyrics objects, Bogan's especially so, shape livelier in motion than most. She, like Medusa, fixes motion; unlike Medusa, she does not motion. If one motion so it one not stop fixes that stops, has fixed one has its Zeno's arrow does not which motion; usurped place. fly. "Medusa," is about the of is itself active and each startlingness stopped motion, changeless, note and heard. The bell does make its sound. struck, tipped

What the poem is about, beyond the legend, is not made clear. The legend is not as it sounds but as retold, allegory, although allegorical, private experience. One to the the of may apply analogies, death, eternity, time, past, paralysis fear, a moment of but such are not and the trance, analogies, given meanings, poem no to of them. are subclasses of a provides bridge any Analogies larger class; and subclasses are not each other's when made so meanings, except intentionally Nor are the sources its in the that by signals. poem's psychic meaning way sources are of the within "The Dream" and "The psychic part meaning Sleep Sources and to the but the does ing Fury." analogies help empower poem; poem not them. It and it say happens; stops. most "Old Countryside" is of the etched yet suggestive lyrics in the language. Its sensuous is firm as can what is un description eye hold; unsaid, painfully so heard, is the silence. The impression of clarity is final that it is startling to find which even surface difficulties make the obscure silence stranger.

The "we" is unidentified, perhaps generic: it could refer to friends, lovers, brother and sister. The time is elusive. "All has come to since sequence proof" the day remembered of the attic in the country house on a stormy day. The a one third stanza refers to time between the time of the memory in stanzas and two and the since the is since" that nearer present time; present "long time, the first time must be long long since. "Far back" from the time of the third stanza occurs fourth stanza. The "far back" as the the suggests space, though last severe were in a that endured "in the stillest of the and images place year" the stillness time and in vision. the fourth stops space, Chronologically stanza, occurs at one winter before the "winter of leaves" and which has snow, least dry could be much earlier. One cannot tell the relation between the time of the that first stanza seems earlier. It does not fourth and first stanzas, except the matter. time far and as does Memory makes past irremediably contemporary, the poem. a we One detail puzzles, either an odd ellipsis or shift to the godlike, the pulling as down oak leaves in a winter of dry leaves, though they were the agents of the a change. The detail in general is simply the finest I know in lyric poem, total seen in the clarity of what is and in the integrity of what is felt: "The summer a wooden in the storm . . . the "mirror cast the thunder, like bell, / Rang ," The attic floor . . . ". . .we heard the cock Shout its cloudy day along / ," /

121 Criticism the axe's sound a moment after the axe's and unplaceable cry, / Delay stroke," then the of love and clear of the last stanza: perfection pain

Far we in back, saw, the stillest of the year, The scrawled vine shudder, and the rose-branch show Red to the as can thorns, and, sharp sight bear, The thin hound's body arched against the snow.

The are the meter is conventional without variation. rhythms uniquely hers; The is in the form called "the heroic for four poem quatrain." Except anapests, substitution normal in much nineteenth- and anapestic being twentieth-century and the trimeter in stanza no variation occurs one iambics, graceful two, that not could find in Dry den's heroic quatrains. The quatrain is traditionally used for narrative, generalizing, and explicit meditation (Dryden's Annus Mirabilis and in a Gray's Elegy Written Country Churchyard); here it is used for particulariz and meditation. Its "narration" is the and of ing, implicit narrating relating memories. Like much in Gray and Dryden, it focuses motion and stillness in a quietly echoing tones; and it achieves sharpness of definition unique in the examples I know of the form, either historical or modern.

In "Song for the Last Act," perhaps her greatest poem and certainly the one I find most moving, her powerfully controlled energies throb with a different res onance. Of all her poems it has the most visible frame (a variation of the refrain verse at is repeated both the beginning and end of each of the three stanzas) and the most radical wildness of and meaning image.

Now that I have your face by heart, I look Less at its features than its frame darkening Where and as quince melon, yellow young flame, Lie with quilled dahlias and the shepherd's crook. a in insolent ease Beyond, garden. There, The lead and marble figures watch the show Of yet another summer loath to go Although the scythes hang in the apple trees.

Now that I have your face by heart, I look.

Now that I have your voice by heart, I read In a the black chords upon dulling page Music that is not meant for music's cage, Whose emblems mix with words that shake and bleed. The staves are shuttled over with a stark Unprinted silence. In a double dream I must out the the stream. spell storm, running The beat's too swift. The notes shift in the dark.

Now that I have your voice by heart, I read.

122 Now that I have your heart by heart, I see The wharves with their and great ships architraves; The rigging and the cargo and the slaves On a beach under a broken strange sky. a O not departure, but voyage done! on The bales stand the stone; the anchor weeps Its red rust and the vine downward, long creeps sun. Beside the salt herb, in the lengthening Now that I have heart I see. your by heart,

The first stanza is mellow description with seemingly firm shapes, yet the firmness is in a a Art and nature share the and one way only seeming. passage, cannot visualize the relation of A face is a face in a exactly parts. portrait a whose frame is darkened by time and itself painted with flowers, by window on an or a which gives actual garden; the face is framed by garden behind which is another Neither statement and the small garden. quite reaches, sur-rationality stanza. prepares for the second

The metaphor in the opening of the first stanza is general, "Now that I have face I varied to the musical and self-inconsistent in the your by heart, look," second stanza: "Now that I have voice I read To your by heart, (the music)." have music heart is not to read it. The music in the second stanza by precisely breaks loose itself and statable and the silence beyond meaning returns, storming of its To one needs to the the music read passion. paraphrase repeat metaphors: on not the page is for music's cage; the emblems mix with words, shake and the staves are shuttled over with silence. The bleed; general meaning, however, is in its tending clear: understanding the person addressed is like knowing musical notes and what in music reaches and the notes into through beyond love and pain and passion. To understand is to relate the formulable knowledge and the as the stanza in and The "double dream" mystery, does, subject feeling. to stream was includes the music and the silence. (The shift the image of the influenced two lines from "Secret Treasure" from Sara Teasdale's book probably by sl Strange Victory, book praised by Bogan in Achievement in Modern Poetry. The are seems lines "Fear not that my music / Like water locked in winter streams." The first even more echoes some details from "In a stanza, certainly, Garden" in the same Darkening book.) In the third and last the moves from the of stanza, poem away shifting meaning to an clear and of a the sea's as an abundantly plangent image port, edge image a as of oncoming death. It is traditional image, realized with greatness, with much and as the first as much of as the beauty regret stanza's, strangeness pain second stanza's, and as much control of the exact measure of sound touched in on shaded and as that of in our image meaning feeling any poem heritage: . . . the anchor weeps Its red rust and the vine downward, long creeps Beside the salt herb, in the lengthening sun.

Now that I have your heart by heart, I see.

123 Criticism It is a and substantial to For the case for great poem, my argument. poetic some greatness is always, finally, the poems. To say that of her lyrics will last as as is is to too little. For since value inheres in long English spoken say eternity, the worth of her poems is not finally to be measured by the length of enduring. To have written "Song for the Last Act," "Old Countryside," "Men Loved Wholly "Didactic from the Beyond Wisdom," Piece," "Medusa," "Henceforth, Mind," "Second and some dozens of other of "The Alchemist," Song," "Night," poems is to one very nearly comparable excellence have wrought of the high achieve ments and to deserve our celebration and our love. of the human spirit,

Next Issue TIR 1/4 AUTUMN 1970

Poetry

Stephen Berg Kenneth Hanson Lawrence Kramer John Logan W. S. Merwin Steven Orlen Dennis Saleh Dennis Schmitz James T?te C. K. Williams and others

Fiction

Robert Kelly Steve Katz Robert Coo ver

Criticism

Sherman Paul on Gary Snyder (part 2) With a new poem by Snyder

Donald Heiney on Natalia Ginzburg With translations of new pieces by Ginzburg Robert Scholes on the Metafiction of Barth, Barthelme, Coover, and Gass

El?seo Vivas on Reality in Literature

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