Wild Party

The Wild Party by Joseph Moncure March

It starts like this:

"Queenie was a blond and her age stood still,
and she danced twice a day in vaudeville.
Grey eyes.
Lips like coals aglow.
Her face was a tinted mask of snow.
What hips-
What shoulders-
What a back she had!
Her legs were built to drive men mad.
And she did.
She would skid.
But sooner or later they bored her:
Sixteen a year was her order.

They might be blackguards.
They might be curs.
They might be actors; sports; chauffeurs-
She never inquired
Of the men she desired
About their social status, or wealth:
She was only concerned about their health.
True:
She knew:
There was little she hadn't been through.
And she like her lovers violent, and vicious:
Queenie was sexually ambitious.
So:
Now you know:
A fascinating woman, as they go."

It ends like this:

"The door sprang open
And the cops rushed in."

The universal trajectory of drunken logic gives this poem its timeless
appeal. Written in the 1920's, it gained instant notoriety as a proxy
for the Jazz Age, complete with the syncopating rhythm and the
inevitable fascination every prosperous age has with "taking a walk on
the wild side." While the journey from Queenie's debut to the cops
rushing in is predictable, it is certainly not boring. The telegraphic
style punches hard. You can feel the words being slapped and cut into
the paper one clack letter clack at clack a clack time clack clack
clack on an old Royal typewriter, ink-smudged fingers balling up
rejected pages, a pint of whiskey well within arm's way, cigar smoke
hugging the ceiling, the stale smell of yesterday's sleaze rising
gently from the old Chesterfield sofa.

I bought this book in Prague and read it in one sitting. The reading
experience is as disorienting as the poem itself. It's like being on a
small sailboat in rough seas all day, returning home in the evening,
still rolling with the waves, even in sleep. This thing will stay with
you for a long time. Read it for the reading experience. Read it for
the style. Read it for the raw rough humor that will make you laugh out
loud. Read it for the encouragement to write: William S. Burroughs
decided on a career in writing after reading this poem in college. Read
it to learn that rap and hip-hop were done before and done better. Read
it as a period piece of the Jazz Age. But do read it. It's fun.

The current edition includes wonderfully evocative illustrations by Art
Spiegelman and a brief forward about the author.