Friday, October 16, 2009

It's been a while..


..since I've done a book post (s'been a while since I've had time to read anything besides textboks, guess these two facts go hand in hand), but today I've like to pay tribute to a favorite poem of mine. The lost classic by Joseph Moncure March, that I was originally drawn to due to its' title: THE WILD PARTY. A narrative poem, written in the classical epic style, a tale of a blonde and her lovers. I remember when I first opened it and started reading, it was like time had stopped. Nothing else existed except the story of the wild party.

Queenie was a blonde, and her age stood still,
And she danced twice a day in vaudeville.
Grey eyes.
Lips like coals aglow.
Her face was a tinted mask of snow.
What hips-
What shoulders-
What a back she had!
Her legs were built to drive men mad.
And she did.
She would skid.
But sooner or later they bored her:
Sixteen a year was her order.
...

 And although this is unusual for me I even read the introduction* and it made me like it even more. I also love Wikipedia's** description of it: "Show people Queenie and her lover Burrs, who live in a manner considered edgy and decadent at the time, decide to have one of their parties, complete with illegal bathtub gin and the couple's colorful, eccentric and egocentric friends, but the party does not unfold without more tumultuous goings-on than planned. Each of the primary characters is vibrant and established." I mean bathtub gin, you gotta love the thought of that..

Some love is fire: some love is rust:
But the fiercest, cleanest love is lust.

*The intro written by Art Spiegelman - who also did the illustrations. My favorite part of the intro is: William Burroughs replied, "It's the book that made me want to be a writer."
**my go-to-place for most info, you gotta love Wiki..

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