The heart: A foundation for the arts

“Innocence of heart and violence of feeling are necessary in any kind of superior achievement: The arts cannot exist without them.” –  Louise Bogan

A native of  Maine, Bogan was born on Aug. 11, 1897, and eventually moved to New York City to pursue a career in writing and published her first book of poetry, Body of This Death: Poems, in 1923.  A longtime writer and poetry editor for The New Yorker, she was appointed the fourth Poet Laureate to the Library of Congress in 1945. 

Bogan, who died of a heart attack in 1970, has been called by some critics “the most accomplished woman poet of the twentieth century” and her works are still widely available, shared and studied. 

For Saturday’s Poem, here is Bogan’,

       Roman Fountain

Up from the bronze, I saw
Water without a flaw
Rush to its rest in air,
Reach to its rest, and fall.

Bronze of the blackest shade,
An element man-made,
Shaping upright the bare
Clear gouts of water in air.

O, as with arm and hammer,
Still it is good to strive
To beat out the image whole,
To echo the shout and stammer
When full-gushed waters, alive,
Strike on the fountain's bowl
After the air of summer.

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