Dorothy Parker has always been a figure that interested me. She's known and celebrated for her participation in the snarky scholar club known as the Algonquin Round Table, a salon of sorts made up of writers and thinkers who weren't afraid to cut with their wit, whether in print or in politics or in the leading media outlets of the 1920s. In what became a regular luncheon date for some powerful voices of the time, many of which have faded with the years. Period heavy hitters like Fitzgerald and Faulkner, while infrequent visitors, were not the core; instead, the club was built upon the sharp wits of theater critics, essayists, and newspaper moguls like Alexander Woolcott, Robert Benchley, George S. Kaufman, Edna Ferber, Harpo Marx, and, of course, Mrs. Parker herself.
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Though Parker made her name as a critic and oberserver in such publications as Vogue and New Yorker, she often spoke of her own talents in a self-deprecating, sometimes bitter way. "I don't do anything," she once said. "I used to bite my nails, but I don't even do that anymore." Later in life, she grew critical of her own contributions and the company she kept with the Algonquin Round Table, as if consigning them to a realm of fops and intellectual hacks, among which she thought herself an equal part. This honest, anti-rose-colored way of seeing herself is also, I think, one of the highest values of her work; she sugar coats nothing, and narrates as one would speak when one is surrounded by (albeit exceptional) friends.
In
what her critical contemporaries may have called mere "flapper verse,"
Parker revealed a stark, unapologetic voice, with which she captured her
own spunk and irreverence. It is obvious in reading her work that Parker was intelligent, astute, and well-read. Even the shortest of her poems speak to a keen familiarity with a gamut of classicists, historical figures, and cultural ideologies. The fact that she chose to boil them down to single four-line verses or a flurry of rhyming couplets is deceptive; her simplistic style does not lessen her commentary on the subject, but rather demands that the reader bring his own knowledge to the piece in order to get the joke. And, as Polonius says, brevity is the soul of wit, afterall.
In large part, Parker's collection of poetic works are an outward depiction of a cynical, jaded opinion on love, crafted not in a falsely independent bravado, but in a voice that is genuinely disillusioned. She does not need love, but from her work I get the distinct impression that she wanted it very much, and that she tried valiantly to find it many times over throughout her life. She does not issue warnings or cautions, but observations cultivated through experiences that may have proven to her, at least, that love is a distant promise unlikely to materialize for the average person.
I've always seen Parker as a sad figure, made so not through tragedy or misfortune, but her personal dissatisfaction with her life as it progressed. Famously, she composed verses on suicide, even alluding to her own attempts to end her life [ as seen in "Resume," which can be found HERE ], but the most emotional of her poems, I think, are the ones chronicling the failure of love as a human condition. It's more than unrequited infatuation or several failed affairs; for Parker, love itself seems an unattainable idyll that rarely appeared in real life, and because of that fact, relationships and sex were not meaningful experiences to be sung about in her verses, but reduced to quips and asides and the occasional irreverent rhyme.
In all, her tenderest, most vulnerable works are the sad ones, the ones that speak faintly of universal regret and the inescapable hollowness that seems to linger in unfulfilled hearts.
Though Parker made her name as a critic and oberserver in such publications as Vogue and New Yorker, she often spoke of her own talents in a self-deprecating, sometimes bitter way. "I don't do anything," she once said. "I used to bite my nails, but I don't even do that anymore." Later in life, she grew critical of her own contributions and the company she kept with the Algonquin Round Table, as if consigning them to a realm of fops and intellectual hacks, among which she thought herself an equal part. This honest, anti-rose-colored way of seeing herself is also, I think, one of the highest values of her work; she sugar coats nothing, and narrates as one would speak when one is surrounded by (albeit exceptional) friends.
"Indian Summer"
In youth, it was a way I had
To do my best to please,
And change, with every passing lad,
To suit his theories.
-
But now I know the things I know,
and do the things I do;
and if you do not like me so,
to hell, my love, with you.
"Charles Dickens"
Who call him spurious and shoddy
Shall do it o'er my lifeless body.
I heartily invite such birds
To come outside and say those words!
"Unfortunate Coincidence"
By the time you swear you're his,
shivering and sighing,
And he swears his passion is
infinite, undying--
Lady, make a note of this:
one of you is lying.
I've always seen Parker as a sad figure, made so not through tragedy or misfortune, but her personal dissatisfaction with her life as it progressed. Famously, she composed verses on suicide, even alluding to her own attempts to end her life [ as seen in "Resume," which can be found HERE ], but the most emotional of her poems, I think, are the ones chronicling the failure of love as a human condition. It's more than unrequited infatuation or several failed affairs; for Parker, love itself seems an unattainable idyll that rarely appeared in real life, and because of that fact, relationships and sex were not meaningful experiences to be sung about in her verses, but reduced to quips and asides and the occasional irreverent rhyme.
In all, her tenderest, most vulnerable works are the sad ones, the ones that speak faintly of universal regret and the inescapable hollowness that seems to linger in unfulfilled hearts.
"Autumn Valentine"
In May my heart was breaking--
Oh, wide the wound and deep!
And bitter it beat at waking,
and sore it split in sleep.
~
And when it came November,
I sought my heart, and sighed,
"Poor thing, do you remember?"
"What heart was that?" it cried.
Parker died in 1967, at the age of seventy-three. It is worth noting that upon her death, she donated the whole of her estate to the Martin Luther King, Jr, foundation for civil rights. I wish that her critiques, essays, and columns were more readily available today, at least to prove her own notions of the triviality of her work false. From her still-widely-read poems, I imagine her as a fascinating character in her time, a woman who sat in the corner of the dance hall with a glass of dark liquor and a cigarette, cracking jokes at the expense of the dancers and dandies alike.
"Inventory"
Four be the things I am wiser to know:
Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.
~
Four be the things I'd been better without:
Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.
~
Three be the things I shall never attain:
Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.
~
Three be the things I shall have till I die:
Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.
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