Old Poetry Poetry • Poets • Essays • Forums •

Maxwell Bodenheim

I lived from 1893-1954. I was from America, and am in the Americas category.

American novelist and poet, born in 1893 in the town of  Hermanville,  His poetry, which incorporates many techniques of the imagists, is cynical and often dwells on the grotesque. Important volumes of his verse are Minna and Myself (1918), Against This Age (1925), and Selected Poems 1914–1944 (1946). Bodenheim’s novels, although savagely realistic and often brutal, contain great energy, humor, and an occasional streak of evangelism. They include Blackguard (1923), Replenishing Jessica (1925), and Georgia Man/(1927). For many years a fixture of the bohemian scene in New York City’s Greenwich Village, Bodenheim slipped into alcoholism and poverty in the 1940s. In February 1954, he and his third wife were found murdered in a furnished room belonging to Harold Weinburg,he was found guilty of the murder but was discovered to be insane.

Popular poetry

Search my poetry:
1 - 10 of 14  Show all by written, popularity, title, first line
  • Factory Girl
    Why are your eyes like dry brown flower-pods,
    Still, gripped by the memory of lost petals?
    11 lines
  • Poet to His Love
    An old silver church in a forest
    Is my love for you.
    10 lines, 8 comments
  • Negro Criminal
    From the pensive treachery of my cell
    I can hear your mournful yell.
    28 lines
  • City Girl
    Beneath the barren artifice of red
    That hides a fertile freshness on your face
    14 lines
  • To A Revolutionary Girl
    Violets peer out in streaks
    On the covered ribs
    78 lines
  • Instructions for Dementia
    Call the moon a round scar left
    By a wound of self-discovery
    35 lines
  • East Side Moving Picture Theatre-Sunday
    An old woman rubs her eyes
    As though she were stroking children back to life.
    14 lines, 1 comment
  • The Camp-Follower
    We spoke, the camp-follower and I.
    About us was a cold, pungent odor --
    14 lines
  • To A Discarded Steel Rail
    Straight strength pitched into the surliness of the ditch,
    A soul you have strength has always delicate secret reasons.
    4 lines
  • To An Enemy
    I despise my friends more than you.
    I would have known myself, but they stood before the mirrors
    6 lines
1 - 10 of 14  Show all by written, popularity, title, first line

Start a forum topic about this poet

, Content