Maxwell "Bogey" Bodenheim (May 26, 1892 – February 6, 1954) 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.
Early life
Born Maxwell Bodenheimer in Hermanville, Mississippi, he was the son of Jewish parents, Solomon Bodenheimer (born 1858) and Carrie (born 1860). His father was born in Germany and his mother in Alsace-Lorraine. Carrie emigrated to the United States in 1881 and Solomon in 1888.
In 1900, the family moved from Mississippi to Chicago, Illinois.
Work
In 1912, Bodenheim met Ben Hecht in Chicago and became literary friends. They co-founded The Chicago Literary Times which ran from 1923 to 1924, and had contributors including Carl Sandburg, Theodore Dreiser, Edgar Lee Masters, Witter Bynner, Arthur Davison Ficke, Floyd Dell, Vachel Lindsay and Sherwood Anderson. At the time, Bodenheim was nicknamed "Bogey." The nickname was also applied in his later years in Greenwich Village.
Bodenheim was a co-founder, alongside sculptor and dancer Lou Wall Moore, of “The Shop,” a bohemian social club in Chicago.
Bodenheim published his earliest verse in the groundbreaking Poetry magazine in 1914. A poem by Bodenheim was featured in the 1917 Others: An Anthology of the New Verse, which included poems by such future luminaries as T. S. Eliot, Marianne Moore, Carl Sandburg, William Carlos Williams, and Wallace Stevens. While the poet was living in New York City, he became an active member of the Raven Poetry Circle of Greenwich Village.
