LOUISE BOGAN; A Portrait
NY: Knopf, 1985. First edition. 8vo, pp. 460, illustrated. A very good tight copy in a slightly worn, price clipped, dj. Inscribed by the author to poet Barbara Howes: :To Barbara Howes with grattitude and in memory of our meetings (?) now rare ten years ago Elizabeth Frank February 1985 N. Y. C." Laid in an an autograph postcard from Frank to Howes, December 16, 1974 telling her how the Bogan papers were purchased for Amherst College by Helen Humphries. Item #57103
From Wikipedia: Born in Livermore Falls, Maine, "Louise Bogan (August 11, 1897 – February 4, 1970) 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 poetic sensibilities of the mid-20th Century. The Poetry Foundation notes that Bogan has been called by some critics the most accomplished woman poet of the twentieth century. It further notes that, "Some critics have placed her in a category of brilliant minor poets described as the "reactionary generation." This group eschewed the prevailing Modernist forms that would come to dominate the literary landscape of the era in favor of more traditional techniques. Dictionary of Literary Biography contributor Brett C. Millier named Bogan "one of the finest lyric poets America has produced," and added that "the fact that she was a woman and that she defended formal, lyric poetry in an age of expansive experimentation made evaluation of her work, until quite recently, somewhat condescending."
From Wikipedia: [Barbara Howes] was adopted by well-to-do Massachusetts family, and reared chiefly in Chestnut Hill, where she attended Beaver Country Day School. She graduated from Bennington College in 1937. She worked briefly for the Southern Tenant Farmers Union in Mississippi, and then edited the literary magazine, Chimera] from 1943 to 1947 and lived in Greenwich Village. In 1947 she married the poet William Jay Smith, and they lived for a time in England and Italy. Her work was published in, Atlantic, Chicago Review, New Directions, New Republic, New Yorker,[4] New York Times Book Review, Saturday Review, Southern Review, University of Kansas Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Yale Review.
Indeed the book contains several references to the relationship of Howes and her husband, poet William Jay Smith with Ms. Bogan.
Price: $125.00 save 20% $100.00