SOURCE: "Impassioned Austerity," in Poetry, Vol. XXIII, No. 6, March, 1924, pp. 335–38.

In the following review, Wolf avers that the language in Body of This Death is often inadequate for the meaning Bogan tries to convey.

Louise Bogan's Body of This Death has more than anything else the quality of direct, simple, almost cruel statement. In a kind of contained twilight frenzy, without excuse or hesitation, the poet lays her hand deliberately upon the central key of a mood, and follows her own instruction:

 Then, for every passion's sake,
Beat upon it till it break. 

The material of the book is, in symbol or simple fact, the love experience of a modern woman, in Miss Bogan's case tinged with a tragedy that is not less impressive for being nameless. As in the lyric called "Song," below, it is throughout single, insistent, unvarnished:

 Love me because I am lost;
Love me...