Angela Alcala

An Intersection of Arts: Musicality in the Poetry of Louise Bogan Angela Alcala

Traditional literary scholarship has identified Louise Bogan as a formal poet whose work is intimately bound with psychic detachment. That is, the precision with which she executes multiple poetic forms may suggest her attempt to maintain emotional distance through technical prescripts. This book, however, takes a new approach, reinterpreting Louise Bogan's formal poems as the integration of music and poetry. The composition of music's rhythms and aural topography inform the poem's construction, which results in language that approximates pure music. This negotiation between the two art forms invites a critical analysis of aestheticism and the implications of such artistic hybridity. For this reason, this book would prove a good resource for interdisciplinary students as well as those studying solely literary criticism. However, any reader generally interested in Louise Bogan or modernist poetry would also find this book an intriguing and refreshing argument.