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,