The Set-Up (poem)

The Set-Up is a book-length narrative poem, written by Joseph Moncure March. It was first published in the winter of 1928^[1] by Pascal Covici, Inc., after the success of March's first poem The Wild Party (1926) which became a succès de scandale after it was banned in Boston for lewdness.^[2]

The Set-Up was inspired by a painting of James Chapin's, which March first saw in 1928. "Chapin's portrait shows a stolid black figure sitting in his corner between rounds and staring meaninglessly into the ring, eyebrows drawn down low on a much-pummelled face, boxing gloves reposing gently on his knees. Meanwhile, his middle-aged white handler leans back on the ropes in a carefree, hard-to-read posture is he gesturing to some pal in the crowd? Smiling at the mockery of the fight racket? Just enjoying the moment and the way the light gleams on his pomaded hair? Whatever Chapin's intended meaning, March seems to have taken from the painting, so that later he could put it into his poem, a sharp awareness of the distance between those who fight and those who watch the fighting; those nakedly exposed and those covering something up."^[3]