Louise Bogan was The New Yorker poetry reviewer for 37 years. She wrote a book detailing her struggles to support herself and her child in the New York literary world called What the Women Lived. I have not read it but I understand it is a fine work.
Apollo gave the Trojan princess Cassandra the gift of prophecy, only to cruelly twist that ability after she rejected his advancements. He made it so that her prophecies would never be believed. Agamemnon later brought her back home to Troy where she was murdered at the same time he was.
Cassandra
by Louise Bogan (1897-1970)
To me, one silly task is like another.
I bare the shambling tricks of lust and pride.
This flesh will never give a child its mother,—
Song, like a wing, tears through my breast, my side,
And madness chooses out my voice again,
Again. I am the chosen no hand saves:
The shrieking heaven lifted over men,
Not the dumb earth, wherein they set their graves.
—
Unusual reading, with the author’s voice lip-synched to another person.
