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A review of The Poetry & Short Stories of Dorothy Parker

Published by Random House

A comprehensive compilation of Dorothy Parker's significant literary contribution of poetry and short "fiction."

Reviewed by: Liz Smith
About Liz Smith

The Poetry & Short Stories of Dorothy Parker If you like your humor acerbic, and your insight served with a dose of cyanide, you too will love the witty, savage, and occasionally suicidal collection, The Poetry and Short Stories of Dorothy Parker, which could more accurately be titled, The Heartbreak Chronicles.

Dorothy Parker, one of the earliest female succesful writers, and a frequent contributor to Vanity Fair as well as a member of the Algonquin Table which included contemporaries Robert Benchley, George Kaufman, Edna Ferber, and other greats; is the queen of witty, divinely cyncial verbage. This book is comprehensive, and includes the majority of her literary legacy including plays, poetry and short stories.

Poem collections such as Enough Rope, Sunset Gun, and Death and Taxes and well-known stories such as "A Telephone Call" and "Here We Are" compliment her lesser-known, though certainly not less prolific stories.

If you enjoyed Sylvia Plath, you will most likely like Dorothy Parker better after reading this compilation of her works, which can be read in doses or in bulk. You will recognize her notorious sarcastic, articulate quips from "Every love's the love before in a duller dress" to " The sun's gone dim, and The moon's turned black' For I loved him, and He didn't love back," and "Three be the things I shall have till I die/ Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye."

Whether you're searching for commiseration or just rich rhyme, this is a book I would definitely prescibe.

Click here to buy this book, or read more about it at Amazon.com: The Poetry & Short Stories of Dorothy Parker

Copyright © by Liz Smith, 2002

Reviewed by Liz Smith:
--The Broke Diaries - by Angela Nissel
--The Poetry & Short Stories of Dorothy Parker - Random House
--Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood - by Rebecca Wells









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