I was in college when I first read Louise Bogan.

Of enough

I still remember the feeling of being lifted up and bathed in a pure light.   An awakening.

Planting Fields Arboretum, Oyster Bay, NY

I bet that’s what flowers feel when they are about to burst open to the world after being asleep for all that time.

Camellia on the verge

I identified with Bogan as a poet who struggled to keep the demons of her childhood in check.  Actually it was just one demon:  her unstable mother who fought with her father, disappeared for regular stretches, and placed her in unsavory situations.  You can read about these Mother-horror tales in Elizabeth Frank’s Bogan bio, but what it comes down to is the most harrowing feeling of being abandoned as a young child that probably scarred her the most.  That scars all of us the most.

Twice-born predator,

You split into the heat,

Swift beyond calculation or capture

You dart into the shadow

Which consumes you.

–– excerpted from “The Dragonfly” by Louise Bogan,