Résumé

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.

Don't worry, this isn't my own state of mind. I just watched "Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle" and now I am enthralled with Dorothy Parker. She had the same dry humor as Oscar Wilde and Mae West, that sort of blunt commentary that surprises and startles. Is sardonic the word I am looking for?

I often have trouble with poetry; I think I have been a speedy reader for so long that my eyes skip lines and do not read carefully enough to understand most poetry. I lose patience and move on. This is a bit embarrassing to admit, but the poems I really enjoy are Edward Lear's limericks and Lewis Carroll's nonsense poems. Oh, and all of A.A. Milne. So perhaps it is Parker's rhythm and rhyming that draw me in. Although, once there, I think it is the surprising off-beat-ness of the rhythm and her playful manipulation of the words that hold my attention. She is so deliciously dark, and her poetry makes me believe she relished in that darkness.