Advice: A Book of Poems

by Maxwell Bodenheim

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84 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1920

About the author

Maxwell Bodenheim was an American poet and novelist. A literary figure in Chicago, he later went to New York where he became known as the King of Greenwich Village Bohemians. His writing brought him international notoriety during the Jazz Age of the 1920s.

Reviews

[Andy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Advice is a slim volume of poetry written by the King of Greenwich Village, Maxwell Bodenheim. It was published 100 years ago. Free copies can be downloaded via Google Books, so here’s your chance to sample some of his work.

There’s a mixture of both nature poetry and hard-boiled urban prose. Nature: There’s a poem about a squirrel and another about a rabbit. The one about the bunny rabbit ends with a snake swallowing him up, so don’t read it to the kids at night or they won’t go to bed from howling with tears rolling down their mugs.

Urban prose: a chilling poem about the first break of Spring in an insane asylum. There’s also a few industrial poems about ironworkers who depend on their muscles to fight off their fatigued flesh. The poem about the hardness and frigidity of Fifth Avenue was quite striking, as well. I can also go into his love song to the steel mills of Chicago (brilliant) and an equally amazing poem called Boarding House Episode.

It’s like this, if Weegee wrote poetry it would read a lot like Bodenheim.