Dorothy Parker Critical Essay | Critical Review by Edmund Wilson

Critical Review by Edmund Wilson

SOURCE: “Dorothy Parker's Poems,” in The New Republic, Vol. XLIX, No. 633, January 19, 1927, p. 256.

Wilson compares and contrasts Parker's poetry to that of her contemporaries, noting in particular those elements which make her work distinctive.

Mrs. Dorothy Parker began her poetic career as a writer of humorous verse of the school of Franklin P. Adams. There are specimens of her early vein in [Enough Rope]: a comic roundel, a rondeau redoublé “(and scarcely worth the trouble, at that)” and a parody of some verses of Gilbert. Mrs. Parker's special invention (aside from her vers libre “hymns of hate,” unrepresented here), was a kind of burlesque sentimental lyric which gave the effect, till you came to the end, of a typical magazine filler, perhaps a little more authentically felt and a little better written than the average: the last line, however, punctured the rest with incredible ferocity. Thus,...
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