( Poem #150) Resume 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.
-- Dorothy Parker |
Another poem that needs very little by way of commentary (which part
*don't* you understand? <g>). 'Resume' is certainly Parker's best-known
poem, though not necessarily her best, and in a way it captures her
style perfectly - at once humorous and despairing; flippant on the
surface, yet concealing an undercurrent of pain[1], and above all
perfectly polished. Parker's poetry has been criticised for its
brittleness; it admittedly comes nowhere near the sheer brilliance of
her short stories, or the rapier wit of her reviews, but it's still
entertaining, often incisive and at times even moving.
m.
[1] Not immediately obvious when reading the poem in isolation, but
suggested when taken in the context of her life and work.
Assessment:
There's a nice essay at [broken link] http://www.dorothyparker.com/blah/
Biography:
Parker, Dorothy
b. Aug. 22, 1893, West End, N.J., U.S.
d. June 7, 1967, New York, N.Y.
nee ROTHSCHILD, American short-story writer and poet, known for her
witty remarks.
Parker grew up in affluence in New York City, attending Miss Dana's
School in Morristown, N.J., and a Roman Catholic convent school in New
York City. She then became drama critic for the magazine Vanity Fair.
She and two other writers for the magazine--Robert Benchley, the
humorist, and Robert Sherwood, then a drama critic and later a
playwright--formed the nucleus of the Algonquin Round Table, an informal
luncheon club held at New York's Algonquin Hotel. She married Edwin Pond
Parker II in 1917 (divorced 1928).
Discharged from Vanity Fair in 1920 for the acerbity of her drama
reviews, she became a freelance writer. She initiated a personal kind of
book reviewing in The New Yorker magazine as "Constant Reader." Some of
these reviews, which started in 1927 and appeared intermittently until
1933, were collected in A Month of Saturdays (1971). Her first volume of
verse, Enough Rope, was a best-seller when it appeared in 1926. Two
other books of verse, Sunset Gun (1928) and Death and Taxes (1931), were
collected with it in Collected Poems: Not So Deep as a Well (1936).
In 1929 she won the O. Henry Award for the best short story of the year
with "Big Blonde," a compassionate account of an aging party girl.
Laments for the Living (1930) and After Such Pleasures (1933) were
collections of her short stories, combined and augmented in 1939 as Here
Lies. Characteristic of both the stories and verses is a view of the
human situation as simultaneously tragic and funny.
In 1933, newly married, she and her second husband, Alan Campbell, went
to Hollywood to collaborate as film writers, receiving screen credits
for more than 15 films, including A Star Is Born (1937), nominated for
an Academy Award. She became active in left-wing politics, disdained her
former role as a smart woman about town, reported from the Spanish Civil
War, and discovered that her beliefs counted against her employment by
the studios in the fervour of anticommunism that seized Hollywood after
World War II. She wrote book reviews for Esquire magazine and
collaborated on two plays: The Coast of Illyria (first performance
1949), about the English essayist Charles Lamb, performed briefly in
Dallas, Texas, and London; and The Ladies of the Corridor (1953), about
lonely widows in side-street New York hotels, which had a short run on
Broadway. An earlier play, Close Harmony, written with Elmer Rice, also
had a short New York run in 1924.
Parker's witty remarks are legendary. When told of the death of the
taciturn U.S. president Calvin Coolidge, she is said to have asked, "How
can they tell?" Of Katharine Hepburn's performance in a 1934 play,
Parker said she "ran the gamut of emotions from A to B." She also is
responsible for the couplet "Men seldom make passes / at girls who wear
glasses."
-- EB
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