Louise Bogan Critical Essay | Critical Review by Allen Tate

SOURCE: A review of The Sleeping Fury, in The Southern Review, Louisiana State University, Vol. 3, No. 1, Summer, 1937, pp. 190-92.

Tate was an influential American critic who was closely associated with two critical movements, the Agrarians and the New Critics. In the following excerpt, he remarks favorably on The Sleeping Fury, commenting in particular on Bogan's poetic control and craftsmanship.

Miss Louise Bogan has published three books, and with each book she has been getting a little better, until now, in the three or four best poems of The Sleeping Fury, she has no superior within her purpose and range: among the women poets of our time she has a single peer, Miss Léonie Adams. Neither Miss Bogan nor Miss Adams will ever have the popular following of Miss [Edna St. Vincent] Millay or even of the late Elinor Wylie. I do not mean to detract from these...
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