Enough Rope
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Average rating3.8
15
Ratings3
Average rating3.8
Now available as a stand-alone edition, the famous humorist’s debut collection—a runaway bestseller in 1926—ranges from lighthearted self-deprecation to acid-tongued satire, all the while gleefully puncturing sentimental clichés about relations between men and women. Known as the wittiest woman in America and a founder of the fabled Algonquin Round Table, Dorothy Parker was also one of the Jazz Age’s most beloved poets. Her verbal dexterity and cynical humor were on full display in the many poems she published in Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and Life and collected in her first book in 1926. The poems in Enough Rope range from lighthearted self-deprecation to acid-tongued satire, all the while gleefully puncturing sentimental clichés about the relations between men and women. Unfortunate Coincidence By the time you swear you’re his, Shivering and sighing, And he vows his passion is Infinite, undying— Lady, make a note of this: One of you is lying.
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This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.
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It’s Dorothy Parker’s debut collection of poems, I think ninety of them–but I ran out of fingers and toes and had to make a guess.
Some are flat out funny, some are sweet (okay, not really that many), some are acidic, some are witty, some are ascerbic, some are lightly self-mocking–some are self-hating. It’s quite the range. Some are just somber and sober, without any species of humor (I think)–but those are few and far between. All show a degree of wit that too many poems I read don’t show (which is why I don’t read many.)
I should just go onto the next section because I guess I’ve slipped into answering:
I enjoyed it. Some of these were just delightful. Some made me think a little. I know that Parker can tend toward dark thinking, but there were one or two that could give Plath a run for her money.
Some of the poems by her that I knew already, like “Résumé” or “One Perfect Rose” were part of this collection and were just as good as it was when I discovered it in High School. “Verse for a Certain Dog” is going to be a favorite of mine for quite a while.
One that I don’t think I’ve read before is called “Finis.” It struck me as something akin to Auden’s “Funeral Blues,” in lamenting a lost love–until the final couplet which turns the whole thing into a jab at the man.
Overall, you get the sense of someone who is a jaded romantic. She understands love–she’s wary of it, knowing the pain it can bring–but she also knows the highs that come with it, and longs for it. And through the highs, lows, bliss, and agony–has kept her sense of humor and a perspective that all things will pass. After all, you might as well live.
It occurs to me (seconds before I hit “publish”), that this is possibly best exemplified in the last poem in the collection:
The Burned Child
Love has had his way with me.
This my heart is torn and maimed
Since he took his play with me.
Cruel well the bow-boy aimed,
Shot, and saw the feathered shaft
Dripping bright and bitter red.
He that shrugged his wings and laughed—
Better had he left me dead.
Sweet, why do you plead me, then,
Who have bled so sore of that?
Could I bear it once again? …
Drop a hat, dear, drop a hat!
Originally posted at irresponsiblereader.com.
