The Blue Estuaries by Louise Bogan

Source of book: I own this.

 

Earlier this year, I spent some time reading in my Library of America collection of 20th Century American poetry. One name I discovered this time was that of Louise Bogan. I wasn’t particularly familiar with her or her works, although perhaps I should have been. 

 

Bogan was the first woman to serve as Poet Laureate, and was respected both as a poet and as a member of a literary circle of her time, which included William Carlos Williams, Edmund Wilson and Theodore Rothke (with whom she had a brief and wild affair). 

Bogan’s poetry is interesting in that it is mostly traditional in an era when experimentation and nontraditional forms were all the rage. She was a contemporary of Ezra Pound, but her poetry usually has rhythm and rhyme and form. I personally have an affinity for formal poetry, although I certainly enjoy more modern styles as well. 

 

The Blue Estuaries is a collection of poems dating from 1923 through 1968, which is most of Bogan’s early and middle period poetry. It is surprisingly difficult to find collections other than this one, and this one was only available in paperback. Perhaps, like too many female poets (and writers generally), she fell victim to the mostly-male gatekeepers who failed to promote and publish her after she was gone. 

 

When reading this collection and noting my favorites, I found that I had tagged the poems I featured in my previous post - I guess I still liked them. Because of this, I recommend clicking through the link above and reading the poems that I featured there. I won’t duplicate them here, but they are well worth reading. 

 

Choosing poems is always a difficult job. Usually, I love most or even all of the ones I read by certain authors, and I certainly could have chosen any number of poems from this book. I would imagine that different ones will speak to me differently at different times. The ones I liked enough to feature here are ones that stood out to me for some reason or another. 

 

This poem opened Bogan’s first collection of poems, written when she was only 26. Only 26, but already a parent and a widow - life had not been easy for her. Perhaps that is why this poem has such a disillusioned and cynical tone, with little hope that the enlightenment the youth seeks will be of comfort to him. The writing, however, is beautiful, with perfect word selection and sounds that reinforce the meaning. Definitely read this one aloud. Robert Frost particularly praised this poem, by the way. 

 

A Tale

 

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.

 

He cuts what holds his days together
 And shuts him in, as lock on lock:
 The arrowed vane announcing weather,
 The tripping racket of a clock;

 

Seeking, I think, a light that waits
 Still as a lamp upon a shelf,—
 A land with hills like rocky gates
 Where no sea leaps upon itself.

 

But he will find that nothing dares
 To be enduring, save where, south
 Of hidden deserts, torn fire glares
 On beauty with a rusted mouth,—

 

Where something dreadful and another
 Look quietly upon each other.

 

This next one is likewise bleak, but in a different way. Bogan transforms what an earlier - or more naive - poet might have viewed as a charming meeting of nature and art into a rather menacing conflict. I suspect Alfred Hitchcock would approve. 

 

Statue and Birds

 

Here, in the withered arbor, like the arrested wind,   

Straight sides, carven knees,

Stands the statue, with hands flung out in alarm   

Or remonstrances.

 

Over the lintel sway the woven bracts of the vine   

In a pattern of angles.

The quill of the fountain falters, woods rake on the sky   

Their brusque tangles.

 

The birds walk by slowly, circling the marble girl,   

The golden quails,

The pheasants, closed up in their arrowy wings,   

Dragging their sharp tails.

 

The inquietudes of the sap and of the blood are spent.   

What is forsaken will rest.

But her heel is lifted,—she would flee,—the whistle of the birds   

Fails on her breast.

 

Continuing in this contrarian vein, Bogan questions the hagiography of memory. Perhaps an influence on this perspective was her own traumatic childhood. Her mother would abandon the family for months at a time, while out on an adulterous love affair or mental breakdown. Bogan herself suffered from depression and, in her letters, questioned whether either she or her mother should have had families. I believe by the time she wrote this one, her unhappy second marriage had ended in a bitter divorce. 

 

Memory

 

Do not guard this as rich stuff without mark
 Closed in a cedarn dark,
 Nor lay it down with tragic masks and greaves,
 Licked by the tongues of leaves.

 

Nor let it be as eggs under the wings
 Of helpless, startled things,
 Nor encompassed by song, nor any glory
 Perverse and transitory.

 

Rather, like shards and straw upon coarse ground,
 Of little worth when found,—
 Rubble in gardens, it and stones alike,
 That any spade may strike.

 

Memories, to Bogan, are as likely to be rubble of little worth than jewels to be celebrated. 

 

I have mentioned many times that I love sonnets. There are a lot of them in this collection, and they vary quite a bit in subject. Most, like this one, are in the Italian form, not the Shakespearean. In this particular verse, Bogan rails against those who would stifle freedom of thought. Though she may be silenced, or her body imprisoned, yet her mind would be free, and seek the chaotic storm rather than conformity. This resonates with me so much. 

 

Sonnet

 

Since you would claim the sources of my thought

Recall the meshes whence it sprang unlimed, 

The reedy traps which other hands have timed

To close upon it. Conjure up the hot

Blaze that it cleared so cleanly, or the snow

Devised to strike it down. It will be free.

Whatever nets draw in to prison me

At length your eyes must turn to watch it go.

 

My mouth, perhaps, may learn one thing too well, 

My body hear no echo save its own,

Yet will the desperate mind, maddened and proud,

Seek out the storm, escape the bitter spell

That we obey, strain to the wind, be thrown

Straight to its freedom in the thunderous cloud.

 

This next one is a delightful image, and an outstanding example of the way poetry can tie together elements. It also is one of a handful of poems you can hear Bogan herself read, from an album that came out in 1965. 

 

The form of this one is really fascinating, once you see it. And it took me several read throughs to see it. Check out that first stanza, which turns the repeated word of “single.” Surrounding that, you can see a portrayal of the tree and its shadow. Moving out from single are the paired words “shadow,” and then “weather/together.” And also the continuity when the shadow and the tree and the door are in line, before time moves the shadow along. 

 

The second stanza becomes more formless, with the sense of rhyme and meter comes adrift. At the very end, Time and Tree draw us back to earth. This is the kind of poem that fascinates those of us who love the way form and meaning are intertwined. 

 

Division

 

Long days and changing weather

Put the shadow upon the door:

Up from the ground, the duplicate

Tree reflected in shadow;

Out from the whole, the single

Mirrored against the single

The tree and the hour and the shadow

No longer mingle

Flying free, they're burned together

 

Replica turned to yourself

Upon thinnest color and air

Woven in changeless trees

The burden of the Sea is clasped against the eye

Though assailed and undone is the green upon the wall and thе sky

Time and the tree stand there

 

This next one is another sonnet, in a similar form, but definitely a different mood and subject. It also uses a different version of the various acceptable rhyme schemes for the sextet portion of the poem. 

 

The turn in the middle, from the description of nature clinging to life even as autumn proceeds, to grief that lingers is a bit of a cold shock. What kind of poem is this? The leaves cling rather than fall, the cones and fruit should separate, the grain escape the sheaf. Even the fires should die out, but they continue to burn. 

 

And grief, whose time should have passed, insists on lingering. 

 

Simple Autumnal

 

The measured blood beats out the year's delay.

The tearless eyes and heart, forbidden grief,

Watch, the burned, restless, but abiding leaf,

The brighter branches arming the bright day.

 

The cone, the curving fruit should fall away,

The vine stem crumble, ripe grain knows its sheaf.

Bonded to time, fires should have done, be brief,

But, serfs to sleep, they glitter and they stay.

 

Because not last nor first, grief in its prime

Wakes in the day, and hears of life's intent.

Sorrow would break the seal stamped over time

And set the baskets where the bough is bent.

 

Full season's come, yet filled trees keep the sky

And never scent the ground where they must lie.

 

Here is another thrilling yet somewhat menacing nature poem. Bogan has a way of writing these throughout the collection. A nature that is not your friend or a comforting metaphor, but with a bit of an edge. It is perhaps fitting that I am posting this as the mountains near my home are experiencing monsoon weather and some pretty crazy thunderstorms.

 

Dark Summer

 

Under the thunder-dark, the cicadas resound.

The storm in the sky mounts, but is not yet heard.

The shaft and the flash wait, but are not yet found.

 

The apples that hang and swell for the late comer,

The simple spell, the rite not for our word,

The kisses not for our mouths,–light the dark summer.

 

This next poem is another subversive one in tone. It is less about disillusionment and a lot more about giving the middle finger to sanctimonious and self-consciously “transcendent” theology and the poetry it has inspired. As one who was fed a bit too much “pie in the sky when you die” and “don’t burn in hell” stuff as a kid, I get it. One fun thing about this poem was set to music by composer William Bolcom as part of a song cycle of poems by female poems. 

 

I Saw Eternity

 

O beautiful Forever!

O grandiose Everlasting!

Now, now, now,

I break you into pieces,

I feed you to the ground.

 

O brilliant, O languishing

Cycle of weeping light!

The mice and the birds will eat you,

And you will spoil their stomachs

As you have spoiled my mind.

 

Here, mice, rats

Porcupines and toads,

Moles, shrews, squirrels,

Weasels, turtles, lizards, - 

Here’s bright Everlasting!

Here’s a crumb of Forever!

Here’s a crumb of Forever!

 

I love that poem. So. Much. 

 

While most of Bogans poems are in more traditional forms, there are definitely some that are modernist. Here is an example of one, that may also have been a sly dig at the Imagist movement (and thus Ezra Pound and his imitators.) 

 

Poem in Prose

 

I turned from side to side, from image to image, to put you down,

All to no purpose; for you the rhymes would not ring -

Not for you, beautiful and ridiculous, as are always the true inheritors of love,

The bearers; their strong hair moulded to their foreheads as though by the pressure of hands.

It is you that must sound in me secretly for the little time before my mind, schooled in desperate esteem, forgets you - 

And it is my virtue that I cannot give you out,

That you are absorbed into my strength, my mettle,

That in me you are matched, and that it is silence which comes from us. 

 

This next one is short, but a wicked bit of wit. 

 

To An Artist, To Take Heart

 

Slipping in blood, by his own hands, through pride,

Hamlet, Othello, Coriolanus fall. 

Upon his bed, however, Shakespeare died,

Having endured them all. 

 

Particularly among the later poems, I find a growing tendency toward thoughtful introspection, of which this poem is a fine example. Contrast with the earlier “Simple Autumnal.”

 

Zone

 

We have struck the regions wherein we are keel or reef.

The wind breaks over us,

And against high sharp angles almost splits into words,

And these are of fear or grief.

 

Like a ship, we have struck expected latitudes

Of the universe, in March.

Through one short segment’s arch

Of the zodiac’s round

We pass,

Thinking: Now we hear

What we heard last year,

And bear the wind’s rude touch

And its ugly sound

Equally with so much

We have learned how to bear. 

 

One more nature-related poem caught my eye. This one doesn’t have an obvious rhyme scheme, but has definite meter and form. 

 

July Dawn

 

It was a waning crescent

Dark on the wrong side

On which one does not wish

Setting in the hour before daylight

For my sleepless eyes to look at.

 

O, as a symbol of dis-hope

Over the July fields,

Dissolving, waning,

In spite of its sickle shape,

 

I saw it and thought it new

In that short moment

That makes all symbols lucky

Before we read them rightly.

 

Down to the dark it swam,

Down to the dark it moved,

Swift to that cluster of evenings

When curved toward the full it sharpens.

 

That line: “In that short moment/That makes all symbols lucky/Before we read them rightly” is devastating. Did she know how good it was when she wrote it? 

 

I’ll end with a very personal poem, one that I read and re-read several times when I discovered it. It is simply incredible, an example of how much poetry can cut to the soul when at its best. After I first read it, I put the book down and just said wow. 

 

Song For the Last Act

 

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.   

Beyond, a garden. There, in insolent ease

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 the black chords upon a 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 spell out the storm, the running stream.   

The beat’s too swift. The notes shift in the dark.

 

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

 

Now that I have your heart by heart, I see

The wharves with their great ships and architraves;   

The rigging and the cargo and the slaves

On a strange beach under a broken sky.

O not departure, but a voyage done!

The bales stand on the stone; the anchor weeps

Its red rust downward, and the long vine creeps   

Beside the salt herb, in the lengthening sun.

 

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

 

Louise Bogan is worth checking out. She had a unique voice, and a bit of an attitude, making for poetry that subverts even as it embraces tradition.