Dorothy Parker (American Writer & Poetess Extraordinaire 1893 - 1967)

Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)

Dorothy Parker was an American writer and poet, best known for her caustic wit, wisecracks, and sharp eye for 20th century urban foibles which also masked her lonely struggle with depression. A member of the Algonquin Round Table group of writers, she wrote criticism for Vogue, Vanity Fair, and later the New Yorker. Parker's caustic wit as a critic initially proved popular, but she was eventually terminated by Vanity Fair in 1920 after her criticisms began to offend powerful producers too often.

Despite the termination, in the 1920s alone she published some 300 poems and free verses in outlets including the aforementioned Vanity Fair, Vogue, "The Conning Tower" and The New Yorker along with Life, McCall's and The New Republic. During the 1930s Parker moved to Hollywood, where she worked on such films as A Star Is Born, for which she won an Academy Award.

Parker died of a heart attack at the age of 73 in 1967. In her will, she bequeathed her estate to the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. foundation. Following King's death, her estate was passed on to the NAACP. In 1988, the NAACP claimed Parker's remains and designed a memorial garden for them outside their Baltimore headquarters. The plaque in part reads, “Here lie the ashes of Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) humorist, writer, critic. Defender of human and civil rights. For her epitaph she suggested, 'Excuse my dust'...

One Perfect Rose

By Dorothy Parker
A single flow'r he sent me, since we met.
All tenderly his messenger he chose;
Deep-hearted, pure, with scented dew still wet—
One perfect rose.

I knew the language of the floweret;
“My fragile leaves,” it said, “his heart enclose.”
Love long has taken for his amulet
One perfect rose.

Why is it no one ever sent me yet
One perfect limousine, do you suppose?
Ah no, it’s always just my luck to get
One perfect rose.

Dorothy Parker, “One Perfect Rose” from The Portable Dorothy Parker, introduction by Brendan Gill. Copyright 1926 and renewed 1954 by Dorothy Parker. Used with the permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

Ballade Of A Great Weariness

By Dorothy Parker
There's little to have but the things I had,
There's little to bear but the things I bore.
There's nothing to carry and naught to add,
And glory to Heaven, I paid the score.

There's little to do but I did before,
There's little to learn but the things I know;
And this is the sum of a lasting lore:
Scratch a lover, and find a foe.

And couldn't it be I was young and mad
If ever my heart on my sleeve I wore?
There's many to claw at a heart unclad,
And little the wonder it ripped and tore.
There's one that'll join in their push and roar,
With stories to jabber, and stones to throw;
He'll fetch you a lesson that costs you sore:
Scratch a lover, and find a foe.

So little I'll offer to you, my lad;
It's little in loving I set my store.
There's many a maid would be flushed and glad,
And better you'll knock at a kindlier door.
I'll dig at my lettuce, and sweep my floor,
Forever, forever I'm done with woe.
And happen I'll whistle about my chore,
"Scratch a lover, and find a foe."

L'ENVOI

Oh, beggar or prince, no more, no more!
Be off and away with your strut and show.
The sweeter the apple, the blacker the core:
Scratch a lover, and find a foe!

Bohemia

By Dorothy Parker
Authors and actors and artists and such
Never know nothing, and never know much.
Sculptors and singers and those of their kidney
Tell their affairs from Seattle to Sydney.
Playwrights and poets and such horses' necks
Start off from anywhere, end up at sex.
Diarists, critics, and similar roe
Never say nothing, and never say no.
People Who Do Things exceed my endurance;
God, for a man that solicits insurance!

MsJacquiiC · #1 04-19-2008, 11:44 PM

Quote:

Why is it no one ever sent me yet
One perfect limousine, do you suppose?
Ah no, it’s always just my luck to get
One perfect rose.

Tribute.

Ah! Indeed! Such caustic witicism
drowned in a perfect sauce of lyricism.
Peace, freedom, humour & one single rose
compounds such rounded sarcastic prose.
Three cheers that we may in an artistic truth
debunk the hypocricy that rules unyielding fools.

Happy National Poetry Month!

PaintedDiary · #2 04-19-2008, 11:57 PM

Dear Ms Jacquii...here is the perfect example of a great American writer...as we have many, and often not mentioned often. Tis was so great to read as she was an icon indeed. I often thought of her because "Prince" did a song called "Dorothy Parker." What a great poet to recognize for NPM and a great Tribute you have shared Ms Jacquii! Thank you for posting!!!

Kim

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