In a recent book club meeting, our group discussed the work of the author, wit, critic and poet, Dorothy Parker, (1893-1967). She might not make the A List of great American writers, but, I think, she is at the top of the B. She is mostly known for her wit, but this is a bit unfair, since she authored short stories, poetry, and criticism of quality. She also, in later life, wrote the screenplay for several films. Parker was also an activist, which got her blacklisted during the McCarthy era. She was, thus, a Renaissance woman; her work is still read today.
Some examples of her wit: When she was told of the death of Calvin Coolidge, who slept up to 12 hours daily, she responded: "How could they tell?" After an abortion, she complained that she had put "all her eggs in one bastard." On another occasion, she was asked to say something witty about the word, 'horticulture.' Her reply: "You can lead a whore to culture, but you can't make her think."
Some of her short stories may be dated and uneven, but we certainly enjoyed many of them. We found her criticism and review less interesting--but interesting enough.
The book we read is entitled, "The Portable Dorothy Parker" from Penguin books, which has been in print for decades.
In this article, I will briefly discuss her poetry.
She was the author of three collections of poetry, Enough Rope, (1926), Sunset Gun, (1928), and Death and Taxes (1931). Editions of her collected poetry followed, including a posthumous collection of additional poems.
Her first poetry collection was widely popular. A reviewer from The Nation, in rather purple prose, described the poems as "caked with salty humor, rough with splinters of disillusion, and tarred with a bright black authenticity." A review for The N.Y. Times, however, dismissed her verse, rather unfairly, I think, as "flapper poetry."
Undoubtedly her most famous poem is the two-liner, "Men seldom make passes/ At girls who wear glasses." There is, however, much more to her work than these lines suggest, as I hope to now demonstrate.
Let us n ow turn our attention to a poem from her first collection, entitled "Fighting Words.'
Say my love is easy had,
Say I'm bitten raw with pride,
Say that I am too often sad--
Still behold me at your side.
Say I'm neither brave nor young,
Say I woo and coddle care,
Say the devil touched my tongue--
Still you have my heart to wear.
But say my verses do not scan,
And I get me another man!
A typical Parker poem--She is here brutally honest with herself. We see how easily line two leads to line three--that is, how raw pride often consigns one to long periods of sadness. All her obsessions are laid out in this poem: pride, sadness, worry about aging, and failed relationships, to name the most important.
Parker had a sad childhood, which often leads to a rather sad adulthood, as it did in her case. Perhaps her emotional life was so turbulent that she required extreme regularity in her versification. Methinks she doth scan verse too much. In the above example, each line contains seven syllables save for the last two, which have eight syllables each. The rhyme scheme, ABAB CDCD EE is regular as can be and is totally unoriginal. The iambic lines of the poem receive a welcome rhythmic variation in the last line, which makes it come across as a sort-of punch line. Many of her poems are turned into quasi jokes by a last line surprise. They give a good indication of how witty her conversation must have been. Wit and perfect timing make excellent neighbors.
Due to the regularity of the meter, many of her lesser poems are almost boring; it didn't have to be that way. A generation or so before her, Gerard Manley Hopkins developed the theory of 'sprung rhythm,' in order to free the poet from too much regularity. He kept the background meter, as in a musical score, but allowed the poet to put as many syllables within each stress as the poet's ear deemed appropriate. He stated that nursery rhymes often evinced sprung rhythm:
Baa Baa black sheep,
Have you any wool?
Yes Sir, Yes Sir,
Three bags full
The rhythm of the second line is 'sprung,' which makes the poem more interesting. If Parker would have composed this poem, it would have read, perhaps, Baa Baa black sheep/ Have you wool?/ etc.
Another--and more famous--example from the same collection, Resumé, follows:
Razors pain you,
Rivers are damp,
Acids stain you,
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful,
Nooses give,
Gas smells awful,
You might as well live.
A critic once said of her, "That bird only sings when she's unhappy." Parker was also no stranger to suicidal ideation. Her most famous story, The Big Blond, is a thinly disguised autobiographical account of one of her attempts at self-destruction. We can see from the last line of Resumé that those attempts were more or less 'cries for help,' rather than really trying to do herself in.
Her poems are almost never as deadly serious as the more powerful ones by Plath and Hopkins are. The wit, even meter, and regular rhymes of her poetry indicate that she could never wallow in despair for too long; they perhaps helped save her.
Aside from her mordant jocular poems, none of them are happy. I will quote now, to illustrate this, a longer poem of hers, Rainy Night.
Ghosts of all my lovely sins.
Who attend too well my pillow,
Gay the wanton rain begins.
Hide the lamp and tearful willow.
Turn aside your eyes and ears,
Trail away your robes of sorrow,
You shall have my further years--
You shall walk with me tomorrow.
I am sister to the rain,
Fey and sudden and unholy,
Petulant at the windowpane
Quickly lost, remembered slowly.
I have lived with shades, a shade;
I am hung with graveyard flowers,
Let me be tonight arrayed
In the silver of the showers.
Every fragile thing shall rust;
When another April passes
I may be a furry dust,
Sifting through the brittle grasses.
All sweet sins shall be forgot;
Who shall live to tell their siring?
Hear me now, nor let me rot
Wistful still, and still aspiring.
Ghosts of dear temptations, heed;
I am frail, be you forgiving,
See you not that I have need
To be living with the living?
Sail, tonight, the Styx's breast;
Glide among the dim processions
Of the exquisite unblest,
Spirits of my shared transgressions,
Roam with young Persephone,
Plucking poppies for your slumber...
With the morrow there shall be
One more wraith among your number.
This is a beautiful poem, ample proof that there is a lot more to Parker's poetry than wit, broken relationships, and jocular irony. The tone is serious, almost funereal, throughout. The meter, as usual in Parker's poetry, is even but there are considerably rhythmic variations, e.g. the trochee at the beginning of the poem. One cannot fail to be impressed by the solemn dignity of the poem.
The theme of the poem is a petition to the ghosts, the protagonist's Eumenides, to stop rendering her life miserably difficult. The protagonist has no intention, however, of giving up her 'lovely' sins; nor will the ghosts stop making her feel guilty. Thus the irony of the last line. There will be one more ghost to pursue her tomorrow, after she gives them one more reason to make herself feel guilty. The result will be a continuation of a very unconventional, yet very unhappy life.
Many of Parker's obsessions are found in this poem, namely, sorrow, depression, defiance and irony. They have rarely sounded so good, however. I repeat: this is a beautiful poem.
Do I have a favorite poem of hers? I do indeed. It is entitled "Philosophy."
If I should labor through daylight and dark,
Consecrate, valorous, serious, true,
Then on the world I may blazon my mark;
And what if I don't, and what if I do?
I laughed out loud with delight when I first read this poem. It is a wise poem. At death, all the obsessions between one's ears will inevitably disappear without a trace. Why obsess then? Why not concentrate on the ego-transcending joys of life, namely love and wisdom?
Parker has given us many gems among the rare needles in her witty haystack. She is well worth reading.
I mentioned at the beginning that some poems were never included in her collections, and were published posthumously. Here is one of them, which an editor calls, "A Posthumous Parker."
Since a miss, my life's been amiss;
I wish I weren't old and done--
What consoles a misfit? This:
You are not the only one.
All right, I admit it, I wrote that poem myself. Did I fool you? Yeah, right.
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