Bringing Jazz!

New York: Horace Liveright. Very Good- with no dust jacket. 1930. Second Printing. Hardcover. Spine ends bumped, wear to tail spine end and corners, paper worn through at corners, overall light soil to paper covers. Lacks the dust jacket.; Fifteen poems of the "jazz" of living in Chicago and New York City, the poems intended to be accompanied by jazz music. This poetry illuminates the dark corners of society: of drunkenness, devil may care, music, trains, dance hall women, hobos, sex, thieves, grifters, race, crime, neighborhoods, noise, undereducated, low society everything. Not sophisticated in form, the poetry is in a mix of straightforward ABAB and AABB rhyming styles, and what spews from Bodenheim's mind gives the subject matter vivid imagery and stylistic punch. From the poem Bringing Jazz: "Last night I had an oboe dream -- / Whistlers in a box car madness bringing jazz. / Their faces stormed in a hobo gleam, / Blinding all the grinding wheels and singing jazz. / The box car gloried in its dirt-- /Just a hallelujah made of chanting mud. / And one old bum opened up his shirt, / Showing wounds of music in his ranting blood." Some poems include what may be considered racially, ethnically, and socially insensitive language and dialects. Some poems include direction for the person reading of the poem, and the accompanying musicians: "Slowly," "More slowly," "Last line slow," "The musical comedy touch. Somewhat connected with 'The Memphis Blues'," "Slowly very slowly." Maxwell Bodenheim was a modernist, Jazz Age, proto-Beat poet, novelist, playwright, and editor of literary periodicals. Initially active in the Chicago Literary Renaissance starting around 1913, in the late 1920s he moved to Greenwich Village in New York City and there wrote prolifically with a bohemian attitude. In his time, he achieved deserved fame for his 13 novels and 10 books of poetry. Unfortunately, his lifestyle, and very life, degenerated with his indifference to and defiance of social norms and stability. This led to a derelict, homeless life of begging on the street, frequent arrests, and hospitalizations for his declining mental state. Bodenheim and his 3rd wife were murdered by a man who offered them his room for the night. Printed on tan, watermarked, laid paper. Binding cloth and paper colors varied with this edition, this variant bound in quarter brown cloth with tan, illustrated paper over boards. The front cover shows the title on a musical staff, musical notation chaotically spilled across staff, and a fanciful depiction of a saxophone. Internally clean and about Very Good-.; 8vo 8" - 9" tall; 70 pages .