Poem-A-Day: Ernest Hemingway

Montparnasse by Ernest Hemingway     There are never any suicides in the quarter among people  one knows  No successful suicides.  A Chinese boy kills himself and is dead.  (they continue to place his mail in the letter rack at the Dome) A Norwegian boy kills himself and is dead.  (no one knows where the other Norwegian boy has gone)  They find a model dead  alone in bed and very dead.  (it made almost unbearable trouble for the concierge)  Sweet oil, the white of eggs, mustard and water, soap suds and stomach pumps rescue the people one knows.  Every afternoon the people one knows can be found at the café.      Today's poem is in the public domain.  About This Poem  "Montparnasse" was originally published in Hemingway's first published work, Three Stories and Ten Poems (1923). The collection was privately published in a run of 300 copies by Robert McAlmon's "Contact Publishing" in Paris. Many of Hemingway's poems, although not widely known, explore subjects often found in his fiction: sex and desire, war and its aftermath, and suicide.

Poetry by Hemingway Ernest Hemingway Complete Poems (Bison Books, 1983)