In the country whereto I go I shall not see the face of my friend Nor her hair the color of sunburnt grasses; Together we shall not find The land on whose hills bends the new moon In air traversed of birds. What have I thought of love? I have said, "It is beauty and sorrow." I have thought that it would bring me lost delights, and splendor As a wind out of old time . . . But there is only the evening here, And the sound of willows Now and again dipping their long oval leaves in the water. -- from "Betrothed

As poetry editor of The New Yorker magazine for nearly 40 years Bogan played a major role in shaping mainstream poetic sensibilities of the mid-20th Century. However this was soon interrupted by the onset of a mental illness that landed her in a psychiatric hospital in 1931 and again in 1933 where Louise Bogan was diagnosed with depression marked by obsessive and paranoid inclinations. "
In late 1969 shortly before her death Louise Bogan ended her thirty-eight year career as a reviewer for The New Yorker stating "No more pronouncements on lousy verse.

She was appointed the fourth Poet Laureate to the Library of Congress in 1945. The Poetry Foundation notes that Bogan has been called by some critics the most accompliLouise Bogand woman poet of the twentieth century. " This group eschewed the prevailing Modernist forms that would come to dominate the literary landscape of the era in favor of more traditional techniques.