The Project Gutenberg eBook of Minna and Myself.

Our thanks to the following publications, for their kindness
in permitting us to reprint, in this volume,
poems that have appeared in their pages:
The Little Review ; Poetry ; the New Republic ;
the Century ; the New York Tribune ;
the Touchstone ; the Seven
Arts ; the Pagan ; the Egoist .

Copyright, 1918.
Pagan Publishing Co. New York
{3}

DEDICATED BY BOTH OF US TO
Fedya Ramsay

A FOREWORD

It is hard for me to realize that this is a first volume of verse. Most of the initial ventures that have passed under my jaundiced eye have been precisely what such early collections are expected to be. They were, as Wilde expressed it somewhere, “promissory notes—that are never met.”... But though it is hard for me to believe that this is a first book, it is still harder for me to believe that this is Maxwell Bodenheim’s first book. In these days of the much advertised “poetic renaissance,” when the Dial out-radicals the Little Review , and even the New York Tribune prints vers-libre on its editorial page, I expected to see nothing less than Bodenheim’s Collected works.... This pleasure will evidently have to be deferred.... Meanwhile, here is an indication, and no slight one, of how distinguished and decorative that collection will be. Without Kreymborg’s caustic and acerb irony, or Johns’ fluent lyricism, Bodenheim has something that neither they nor, for that matter, any of his colleagues in “ Others ” possess. I refer to his extreme sensitivity to words. Words, under his hands, have unexpected growths; placid nouns and sober adjectives bear fantastic fruit. It is a strange and often magic potion he brews from them; dark and fiery liquids that he pours into curiously designed cups. Sometimes he gets drunk with his own distillation, and reels between preciosity and incoherence. Sometimes the mixture is so strong that even his metaphors, crowding about each other, become inextricably mixed. But as {8} a rule, Bodenheim is as clear-headed as he is colorful. Among the younger men he has no superior in his use of the verbal nuance .

But it is not merely as word-juggler that Bodenheim shines. He has an imagination that he uses both as a tool and as a toy. Personally, I care more for Bodenheim when he plays with his images (as in “Poet to His Love,” “Hill Side Tree” and certain of the poems to “Minna”), than when his figures attempt to build or destroy something (as in “To An Enemy,” “The Interne,” “Soldiers”). It is as a decorator that his gifts serve him best. Even such an intimate picture as “Factory Girl” is saved from mawkishness by his delicate sense of design. The composition in which Death is seen as

has a quality that suggests the Beardsley of “Under the Hill.” In the realm of the whimsical-grotesque, Bodenheim walks with a light but sure footstep.

There are doubtless other things—sharper and more important—in the following poems that will attract many. But the ones that I have found seem to have a quiet, unofficial, dignity of their own. Others may ask for more. For me, they are sufficient.

MINNA

III

VII

VIII

XII

XIII

XIV

XVI

XVII

XVIII

XIX

XXI

XXII

XXIII

XXIV

XXV

XXVI

XXVII

MYSELF

POET TO HIS LOVE

DEATH

TO GEORGIE MAY

POET-VAGABOND GROWN OLD

BLIND

LOVE

HILL-SIDE TREE

INTRUSION

CHANGE

PORTRAITS

MEETING

COTTON-PICKER

FRIENDSHIP

FACTORY GIRL

DEATH

INTERLUDE

CHORUS GIRL

OLD AGE

TO ONE DEAD

TO A DISCARDED STEEL RAIL

TO AN ENEMY

SOLDIERS

FORGETFULNESS

THE INTERNE

REAR PORCHES OF AN APARTMENT BUILDING

TO ONE DEAD

THE MASTER-POISONER
Maxwell Bodenheim and Ben Hecht

The Poisoner’s living-room. Purple velvet draperies embroidered with huge lavendar and orange lilies hang over the rear wall, completely covering it. One great scarlet cushion, four feet high and five feet wide, stands at the center of the wall against the draperies. The right and left walls have two small, narrow windows near the top, through which a dimly glowing light pours, forming a triangle as it strikes the floor. A narrow tall entrance blocked by orange-colored portieres stands in the center of the right and left walls. The floor is black and uncovered. A huge black candle three inches wide and five feet high emerges from a black urn in the center of the floor, bisecting the triangle formed by the two streams of pale light. White and scarlet cushions are scattered about the floor. On two of these cushions sit Sobe, the Poisoner, and Maldor, his Assistant. They sit to the left and right of the candle, eyeing each other with a softly-smiling melancholy. Sobe is tall, black-bearded, condor-faced, and clad in an orange robe, and black sandals. Maldor is short and smooth-shaven, with the face of a sleepy girl. He wears a white robe and sandals. {70}

( Fana draws aside the portieres at the left. Fana is tall, with a majestic ugliness. She is dressed in a dark brown robe. Her face is swathed in a pale brown veil, knotted at the nape of the neck, and falling almost to her feet. She stands motionless. The two men turn and stare at her. )

( He rises and departs through the right entrance. Maldor rises and continues to look steadily at Fana. )

( Maldor quickly walks to the right entrance, draws aside the portieres, and peers cautiously out. He returns quickly to Fana. )

( Maldor hears Sobe’s footfalls and seats himself impassively upon his cushion. )

( Fana rises and lifts her veil from her mouth. She drinks, smiling at Maldor, who sits and stares impassively ahead of him. Sobe rises and moves to the back of the room, watching her. )

( He draws aside a panel portiere in the rear draperies, and a long narrow mirror is revealed. )

( Fana flings out both her arms and moves toward him. She speaks in a strange voice. )

( He staggers another step forward and pitches headlong across the scarlet cushion on which he sat. Maldor leans forward and touches his throat as Fana softly laughs. )

( Maldor straightens himself and stares impassively ahead of him. Fana remains an instant staring at herself in the mirror, then turns, and with an enigmatic smile, passes out of the room. )

POET’S HEART

A great window of palest purple light. The lower corner of the window is visible. A dark purple wall frames the window, and narrow rectangles of the wall, below and to the left of the window-corner, are visible. Before the window corner is the portion of a pale pink floor. One tall thin white candle stands against the dark purple rectangle of wall to the left of the window-corner. It bears a narrow flame which remains stationary. Soft and clear light pours in from the window-corner and dim shapes stand behind it. The Mad Shepherd appears from the left. He holds a reed to his lips, but does not blow into it. A long brown cloak drapes him: black sandals are on his feet. His black hair caresses his shoulders; his face is young. He pauses, three-fourths of his body framed by the palest purple window-corner.

I’ve lost a tune. It’s a spirit-rose, and a reed-limbed boy ran before me and whisked it past my ears before {86} I could seize him. Have you seen him, window clearer than the clashing light-bubbles in a woman’s eyes? ( A pause. ) I sat on a rock in the midst of my sheep and smiled at the piping of my young soul, as it climbed a spirit-tree. Soon it would whirl joyously on the tip of the tree, and my heart would turn with it. Then the song brushed past me and made my head a burning feather dropping down. I stumbled after it, over the sun-dazed hills, and the reed-limbed boy would often stop, touch both of my eyes with the song-flower, and spring away. I saw him dance into this black palace. I followed, through high corridors, to you, palest purple window, towering over me like a silent mass of breath-clear souls. He has gone. Palest purple window, tell me where he is?

( There is a short silence. The Mad Shepherd stands despairingly fingering his reed. The Narcissus Peddler appears from the right. He is an old man, a huge basket of cut narcissus strapped to his back. His body is tall and slender; his face a bit yellow, with a long silver-brown beard. His head is bare. He wears a black velvet coat, pale yellow shirt, soft grey, loose trousers, and black sandals. He rests his basket upon the floor. The Mad Shepherd takes a step toward him, wearily. )

( He seats himself beside his basket; Shepherd stands despairingly; the Slender Nun appears from the right: She is small and her body like a thin drooping stem; she wears the black dress of a nun but her child face is uncovered. Her feet are bare. She stops, standing a step away from the Peddler. )

( The Wine-Jar Maiden appears from the right. She is tall and pale brown; upon her head is a long pale green jar; her hair is black and spurts down. Her face is wide but delicately twisted. She wears a thin simple pale green gown, with a black girdle about her waist, one tasseled end hanging down. She stops a little behind the Slender Nun, and lowers her wine-jar to the floor. The Nun turns and partly faces her. The Narcissus Peddler looks up from where he has sat, in a reverie, beside his basket. )

( The Narcissus Peddler slowly rises and takes a stride toward the palest purple window. )

( After a short silence the Narcissus Peddler and the Slender Nun, hand in hand, leap through the window-corner and vanish. The Wine Jar Maiden leaps after them, a moment later, and also disappears. The Mad Shepherd sits down and blows little fragments of piping into his reed, long pauses separating them. As he does this, he looks up at the window, his head motionless. The Narcissus Peddler, the Slender Nun and the Wine Jar {90} Maiden appear from the left walking slowly, in single file, as though in a trance. The Narcissus Peddler stands beside his basket, which he left behind him; the Wine Jar Maiden beside her jar, and the Slender Nun between them. )

( The poet quietly appears from the right. He is dressed in a deep crimson robe, pale brown turban and black sandals; his head is bare. He surveys the others a moment, then touches the shoulder of the Wine Jar Maiden. She turns and stares at him. The others turn also. )

You are all in my heart—a wide space with many buried, black palaces, huge pale-purple windows, hills with rocks for mad shepherds, strolling flower-venders, wine-jar maidens dancing in high courtyards hushed with quilted star-light, and sometimes a slender nun walking alone through the aisles of old reveries. I have woven you into a poem, and you were drawn on by me. But when my poems are made I take my people to a far-off garden in my heart. There we sit beneath {91} one of the shining trees and talk. There I shall give you your soul, your heart, your song—and your huge narcissus flower. And out of them make other poems, perhaps? Who knows? Come.

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The Mad Shepherd
The Narcissus Peddler
The Slender Nun
The Wine Jar Maiden
The Poet