Dorothy Parker Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Arthur F. Kinney

Critical Essay by Arthur F. Kinney

SOURCE: “Her Accomplishment: Poetry, Fiction, Criticism,” in Dorothy Parker, Revised, Amherst: University of Massachusetts, 1998, pp. 86-112.

The following is Kinney's study of Parker's maturation as a poet, offering a comparison of her with other poets of her generation and persuasion.

Premises: “call Her by My Name” …

[Parker] learned in writing her plays, as she did in the evolution of her essays and light verse, the inherent value in imaginative application of experience, starting with a personal perspective as a handy persona and moving, more and more, toward a personal aesthetic. Voicings multiply, contradict, appear and recede, denote and imply. “The content of her verse began to change drastically, too,” Meade writes, as she began to expose and analyze her own experiences, her own hopes, fears, and betrayals.

Satin gowns turn into shrouds, decomposing corpses clinically observe the activity of worms, the living dead ghoulishly deck themselves with graveyard flowers. There were alarming glimpses, no more...
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