About Louise Bogan
Louise Bogan (11 August 1897 – 4 February 1970) was an American poet. She was appointed the fourth Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1945, a role today known as U.S. Poet Laureate, becoming the first woman to hold this title. Throughout her life she wrote poetry, fiction, and criticism, and became the regular poetry reviewer for The New Yorker. Samuel Barber put her poem "To Be Sung On The Water" to music in 1968 and requested that it be played at his burial in 1981. Dictionary of Literary Biography contributor Brett C. Millier described her as "one of the finest lyric poets America has produced." He said, "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." With the help of a female benefactor, Bogan attended Girls' Latin School for five years, where she began writing poetry and reading the first issues of Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. She was appointed the fourth Poet Laureate to the Library of Congress in 1945, and was the first woman to hold this title. She returned to New York City and published her first book of poetry, Body of This Death: Poems. Her Collected Poems: 1923–1953 won her the Bollingen award in 1955 as well as an award from the Academy of American Poets in 1959.
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