ACKNOWLEDGMENT
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
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DEDICATED BY BOTH OF US TO
Fedya Ramsay
CONTENTS
Poems
Poems
A One-Act Poetic Play by Maxwell Bodenheim and Ben Hecht
A Poetic Play in One Act
A FOREWORD
It is hard for me to realize that this is a first volume of verse. Mostof the initial ventures that have passed under my jaundiced eye havebeen precisely what such early collections are expected to be. Theywere, as Wilde expressed it somewhere, “promissory notes—that are nevermet.”... But though it is hard for me to believe that this is a firstbook, it is still harder for me to believe that this is MaxwellBodenheim’s first book. In these days of the much advertised “poeticrenaissance,” when the Dial out-radicals the Little Review, and eventhe New York Tribune prints vers-libre on its editorial page, Iexpected to see nothing less than Bodenheim’s Collected works.... Thispleasure will evidently have to be deferred.... Meanwhile, here is anindication, and no slight one, of how distinguished and decorative thatcollection will be. Without Kreymborg’s caustic and acerb irony, orJohns’ fluent lyricism, Bodenheim has something that neither they nor,for that matter, any of his colleagues in “Others” possess. I refer tohis extreme sensitivity to words. Words, under his hands, haveunexpected growths; placid nouns and sober adjectives bear fantasticfruit. It is a strange and often magic potion he brews from them; darkand fiery liquids that he pours into curiously designed cups. Sometimeshe gets drunk with his own distillation, and reels between preciosityand incoherence. Sometimes the mixture is so strong that even hismetaphors, crowding about each other, become inextricably mixed. But as{8}a rule, Bodenheim is as clear-headed as he is colorful. Among theyounger 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 animagination that he uses both as a to