Growing up in an unstable household may have instilled a poet's soul into Louise Bogan.

She was born in Livermore Falls, Maine. Her father, Daniel Bogan, was a superintendent in a paper mill, and her mother, Mary Helen Murphy Shields, was a frequently unfaithful wife. The family -- which also included Bogan's brother -- moved regularly, all over the Northeast.

Due to her mother's extra-marital activities, the marriage was volatile at times. When Bogan graduated from high school, she enrolled at Boston University for one year. However, her early education was at the highly-regarded (for its emphasis on classical education) Boston Girls' Latin School, and so she received a solid foundation in the liberal arts and classics. By the time she was in college she was writing poetry. The times dictated modernism in literature and the arts, but Bogan set out to create her own unique style. Design and contrast are hallmarks of her poetry, and her earlier style did not vary much with her mature work.

Bogan married young, to Curt Alexander. The marriage was unhappy. One daughter was born to the couple, but she died one year later. Within a few years her husband was dead as well (the couple had already separated). She then moved to New York City, where she lived the rest of her life. She met a number of other writers in New York's thriving literary community. Among her friends she counted William Carlos Williams, Malcolm Cowley, Lola Ridge, John Reed, Marianne Moore, and Edmund Wilson, who became her mentor.

In 1923, Bogan published her first book, Body of This Death. Unlike the associative free verse of modernism, her poems were more lyrical in nature. They were brief, with limited themes, and written in a formal style. They also presented, for the first time, two themes often associated with her work: love and grief.

At the time of publication she was under the care of a psychiatrist, who helped her battle frequent depression. Sometimes her depression resulted in hospitalization. Few of her friends knew about her emotional struggles; she was an intensely private person. Bogan married again, but once more it did not last. She continued to write and to publish, despite the fact that the writing process was something she found torturous. During the 1930s she was hired as a poetry reviewer for the New Yorker. She held the position for thirty-eight years. She occasionally taught during the 1940s, and turned more to education and criticism. In 1945 she was appointed the fourth Poet Laureate to the Library of Congress. In 1951 she was commissioned to write a brief history of American poetry. She modestly did not mention herself once in the entire volume.

Her later life was more stable, with a lessening of financial burdens, helped in large part by an award from the Academy of American Poets.