Louise Bogan
LIVERMORE FALLS — “Today is Louise Bogan’s 126th birthday,” a post on the town Facebook page read Aug. 11.
That note led to a quest to learn more about the woman born Aug. 11, 1897, in Livermore Falls, and who became the first female poet laureate to the Library of Congress in 1945.
She died Feb. 4, 1970, in New York City at the age of 72.
In hopes of learning more about Bogan’s life in Maine, the Livermore Falls Advertiser posted a message on the Facebook page You Know You’re From Livermore Falls/Livermore/Jay when…
In response, one person shared the link to a tribute given at the University of Maine Farmington after Bogan’s death. The tribute was given by Susan Gagnon during the Nordica Celebration of Women in the Arts at the university’s Nordica Auditorium.
“I had never heard a whisper of American poet Louise Bogan’s writings while growing up in the Androscoggin River Valley,” Gagnon said in her tribute. “In 1970, I read her tiny obituary in the Livermore Falls Advertiser, intrigued by the sheer fact of an acclaimed women poet, who had been born in our region. I kept the sacred clipping in my wallet for nearly a decade, endeared by the simple words, ‘born in Livermore Falls, Maine.'”
She said Bogan was the granddaughter of a sea captain who emigrated from Ireland to Portland, Maine, before the potato famine of the 1840s. The couple had 12 children and built a home on Captain’s Hill in Portland. The eldest, Daniel Bogan, was Louise Bogan’s father, who married Mary Murphy Shields in 1882. ”
“By 1897, Daniel Bogan, a paper mill employee, worked his way up to mill superintendent,” according to Gagnon. “Daniel and Mary Bogan were residing south of here, in the gritty paper mill village of Livermore Falls. Less than a 25 minute drive away. Less than a mile from my childhood home.”
According to author Elizabeth Frank, Bogan was born on Munsey Avenue in the mill-owned superintendent’s house, Gagnon said. “Bogan remembered only from photographs that the home had a cupola and Victorian gingerbread eaves,” she said.
Bogan resided with her family in Livermore Falls until she was four years old. They moved to Milton, New Hampshire, in 1901, the first of many relocations to New England paper mill communities, according to Gagnon.
“Bogan’s mother’s displeasure for paper mill towns and her husband prompted her to travel to the west coast from 1906-1907. In her mother’s absence, Bogan was boarded at St. Mary’s Convent in Manchester, New Hampshire. In adolescence she attended the Girls’ Latin School in Boston and began writing poetry by the age of 14,” according to the tribute.
Many residing in the Androscoggin River valley were shackled by harsh economic restraints: lack of education, language barriers and cultural oppression, Gagnon said. “Rare were the extensive educational opportunities offered to Ms. Bogan.”
Gagnon was unable to obtain Bogan’s birth certificate but recovered a copy of her baptism record from the St. Rose of Lima Church.
“Ms. Bogan was born in a community where the paper mill pumps out daily, black soot swarming above and settling on everything and anyone in its way,” Gagnon wrote. “Ms. Bogan once lived amongst the shadows of the river valley, perched on the crest of Munsey Avenue; like the native Maine chickadee her voice was never heard over the paper mill’s own melodies.
“May her literary achievements and historic significance … be brought into light and voice,” she wrote.
Treat Memorial Library, in response to a post seeking more information about Bogan, received some of her correspondence and some newspaper clippings.
Last December, Frederick Hinchliffe II of Harvard, Massachusetts, donated several books, some written by Bogan, others reviews of her works, and other memorabilia.
“When the time comes to give out the literary laurels for 1954, the judges who wear the silks of the Bollingen, Pulitzer and the National Book Awards are going to have the devil’s own time deciding between the works of Leonie Adams and Louise Bogan,” Charles Poore wrote in an article donated to the library.
The library also received a copy of the memorial service held for Bogan on March 11, 1970, at the American Academy of Arts & Letters in New York City.
A July 23, 1938, Lewiston newspaper article written by Elizabeth F. Griffin noted, “High on the bank of the Androscoggin, overlooking the town, is the site of Louise Bogan’s birthplace … There are indeed few tangible reminders of Louise Bogan’s early life in Livermore Falls. The family moved away when she was too young to have formed friendships. Yet the town watches with proprietary interest the career of its most famous daughter, described by great critic as ‘the most accomplished woman poet of her time.'”
Gagnon wrote in her tribute, “Ms. Bogan once wrote, ‘The accent and character of one’s native region, live in the mind and heart just as one’s speech.'”
Bogan wrote poetry, fiction and criticism, and became the regular poetry reviewer for The New Yorker magazine.
Leaving Boston University after her freshman year the spent a few years in Vienna before returning to New York City, according to Wikipedia. Her first book of poetry is titled “Body of This Death: Poems.” Her second is “Dark Summer: Poems.”
She was awarded two fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the 1955 Bollingen Prize from Yale University, and monetary 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, according to Wikipedia.
Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress was later renamed the United States Poet Laureate, according to poets.org.
Bogan died in New York City, the site notes.
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