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Biography Louise Bogan

U.S. Consultant in Poetry, 1945-1946

Louise Bogan, U.S. Consultant in Poetry, 1945-1946. Photo credit: New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection (Library of Congress).

Louise Bogan was born in Livermore Falls, Maine, in 1897. She authored six poetry collections, including Body of This Death (1923), Collected Poems: 1923-1953 (1954), and The Blue Estuaries: Poems, 1923-1968 (1968). She also published several books of prose and translations. Bogan’s honors included two fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Bollingen Award from Yale University, and awards from the Academy of American Poets and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1945, she was appointed the Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. For four years, Bogan was a freelance writer in New York City, and later served as the poetry editor for The New Yorker for 38 years. She was a visiting professor at the University of Washington, Seattle; the University of Chicago; the University of Arkansas; and Brandeis University. Louise Bogan died in 1970.

Audio Recordings with Louise Bogan

Selected Works at the Library of Congress