Words for Departure | Literary Criticism & Book Review

Words for Departure Critical Overview

Bogan's poem "Words for Departure" was included in her first published collection of poems, Body of This Death. Although she was a young poet at the time of its publication, Bogan had already published poems in poetry magazines and so there was some notice paid in 1923 to this thin book of twenty-seven poems. As Martha Collins observes in her study of Bogan's work titled Critical Essays on Louise Bogan, critics in general found her first collection to be a "small book" filled with rather short poems. Collins states that "Bogan's strongest admirers have almost always been poets."

Perhaps Collins's observation helps explain the mixed reviews that greeted Bogan's first book. In a letter written March 1, 1924, and included in Ruth Limmer's collection of Bogan's personal letters (What the Woman Lived: Selected Letters of Louise Bogan, 1920—1970), Bogan mentions several unfavorable reviews. She writes, "The Dial certainly gave...
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