A sample, for example

I really like Joseph Moncure March's "lost classic", The Wild Party, especially as illustrated by Art Spiegelman. (Go ahead, look inside.) I guess after something has become a fairly successful broadway musical, and stayed that way a couple years, it isn't so 'lost' anymore. But it can still be good clean fun.

Oh, yes - Burrs was a charming fellow:
Brutal with women, and proportionately yellow.
Once he had been forced into a marriage.
Unlucky girl!
She had a miscarriage
Two days later. Possibly due
To the fact that Burrs beat her
     with the heel of a shoe
Till her lips went blue.
For a week her brother had great fun
Looking for Burrs with a snub-nosed gun:
At the end of which time, she began to recover;
And Burrs having vanished, the thing blew over.
Just a sample
For example:
One is probably ample.

But I'll give you one more. From the malicious playground jingle quality of 'possibly due ... with the heel of a shoe/Till her lips went blue' to a sort of Robert Frost-as-decadence thing:

Some love is fire: some love is rust:
But the fiercest, cleanest love is lust.

It doesn't really work out for Burrs or Queenie, the star of the story. If only these people listened to Hugo and got themselves tested. But she'll bounce back. ("Queenie was a blonde/ And her age stood still/ And she danced twice a day in vaudeville.") I think this handsomely illustrated little edition would make a fine stocking stuffer for the love in your life.

Comments

[Keith]

This is one of my favorites as well and I love, love, love the Spiegelman illustrations! They improve upon the text, in my opinion.

[joe o]

A good book of comic poems from the twenties is don marquis's "archy and mehitabel". At one time it was really popular but it is no longer in fashion, which means that most used book stores have a cheap copy. The poems are clever and sharper than I expected.

There are some parallels to the "wild party". A famous cartoonist (George Herriman) illustrated a later edition, and there was a broadway musical version (in the sixties).

[Carlos]

I have a rather dinged edition from 1969 of The Wild Party paired with The Set-Up, a fable of boxing:

And what a beating the game had shown him!
His own mother wouldn't have known him.
Battered for years, his face had grown
Distorted,
Massive,
Swollen of bone.
Cauliflower ear.
Cocoanut head.
Close-cropped hair,
Bristling,
Red.

A little like Vachel Lindsay's "Higher Vaudeville".

[Keith]

Joe, do you mean George "Krazy Kat" Herriman? That would be a find.

[joe o]

Keith,

George "Krazy Kat" Herriman illustrated later editions of "archy and mehitabel". Those editions are pretty common.

There is a sample of an illustration at the top of this page.

http://www.donmarquis.com/archy/