SOURCE: '"My Scourge, My Sister': Louise Bogan's Muse," in Coming to Light: American Women Poets in the Twentieth Century, edited by Diane Wood Middlebrook and Marilyn Yalom, The University of Michigan Press, 1985, pp. 92–104.

In the following essay, DeShazer examines the inspiration and defining qualities of Bogan's poetic voice.

"What makes a writer?" Louise Bogan asks in a lecture given at New York University during the 1960s. Rejecting the "purist" notion of a passionate love for the act of writing in itself, she explores such contributing factors as intellectual power, talent, and, in particular, "gift."

It is a gift that I prefer to think of it. The ancients personified the giver of the gift as the Muse—or the Muses: the Daughters of Memory. The French use the word souffle figuratively for what passes between the Muse and the artist or writer—le souffle du génie—the...