Overview
The Wild Party is a book-length narrative poem, written by Joseph Moncure March, who also wrote The Set-Up.
Published in 1926 by Pascal Covici, Inc., the poem was widely banned, first in Boston, for having content viewed as lewd. The poem was a success notwithstanding, and perhaps in part due to, the controversy surrounding the work. March's subsequent projects were more mainstream.
The poem tells the story of show people Queenie and her lover Burrs, who live in a decadent style that March depicts as unique to Hollywood. They decide to have one of their parties, complete with illegal bathtub gin and the couple's colorful, eccentric and egocentric friends, but the party unfolds with more tumultuous goings-on than planned.
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 trembling streets, like angry thunder:
Of engines throbbing; and hoarse steam spouting;
And feet tramping; and great crowds shouting.
A lust so savage, they could have wrenched
The flesh from bone, and not have blenched.
From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).