1. Attending a Poetry Reading
The Life, Locution, and Legend of Dorothy Parker.
Gas smells awful; you might as well live" ("Suicide" 2).
This is often considered the most famous poem of Dorothy Parker among her over 400 poems that she composed during her lifetime. What does this say about an author who thinks and feels this way, who expresses her every thought in her poetry? Words were nearly her whole life and she expressed her ideas through these words. Since she sold her first poem at the age of twenty-one, she has been influencing minds with her ideas and thoughts. Dorothy Parker led a very interesting life with her poetry and writings being a major entity, pouring her heart and soul, her thoughts and dreams into her writing therefore being a strong influence on American literature.
Parker was born to J. Henry and Eliza Rothschild on August 22, 1893 in West End, New Jersey. She didn't have a very happy childhood for her mother died when she was very young and she endured a poor relationship with her father and stepmother. Writing was her passion ever since she was a little girl and it was also her escape. After having many of her works published in journals like Vanity Fair and receiving moderate fame for the commotion her controversial poems like "Women: a Hate Song," induced, in 1916 she acquired an editorial position for Vogue magazine. In addition, that year Parker received a marriage proposal from Edwin Pond Parker II who she married soon after and then later divorced on March thirty-first of 1928. .
Throughout her life Parker's family and friends have tolerated her peculiar behavior like her many fetishes. As it is obvious in her expressive poetry she had an obsession with death which she also expressed in everyday life by subscribing to mortuary science journals and wearing tuberose perfume that is a scent used by morticians. She herself suffered much scrutinizing by her many critics which inspires one author to describe her as "One solitary, unarmed American writer of great significance" (Breese VII).