“The Wild Party” by Joseph Moncure March

Misha, in all of his wisdom, gave me a classily bound and rare (#434 out of 2,000) edition of this book for the holidays. Its pages are thick, and uneven at the edges. The author uses colons shamelessly, and well. Art Spiegelman (illustrator, author of “Maus”) rediscovered this book years ago and illustrated a new version of it (that’s where the picture above comes from). Here’s a tiny taste of the roaring twenties romp that lies between the covers (a party based on this book will undoubtedly occur at my house in the near future):

9

Some love is fire: some love is rust:
But the fiercest, cleanest love is lust.
And their lust was tremendous. It had the feel
Of hammers clanging; and stone; and steel:
And torches of the savage, roaring kind
That rip through iron, and strike men blind:
Of long trains crashing through caverns under
Grey tumbling streets, like angry thunder:
Of engines throbbing; and hoarse steam spouting;
And feet tramping; and great crows shouting.
A lust so savage, they could have wrenched
The flesh from bone, and not have blenched.