Happy Birthday, Dorothy Parker!
Dorothy Parker would have been 126 today! From the National Portrait Gallery: "As the playwright Lillian Hellman remarked at her passing: 'She was part of nothing and nobody except herself. It was this independence of mind and spirit that was her true distinction.'" Poets.org points us to one of her great poems, "Parties: A Hymn of Hate." From the midst:
There is the Day in the Country;
It seems more like a week.
All the contestants are wedged into automobiles,
And you are allotted the space between two ladies
Who close in on you.
The party gets a nice early start,
Because everybody wants to make a long day of it—
They get their wish.
Everyone contributes a basket of lunch;
Each person has it all figured out
That no one else will think of bringing hard-boiled eggs.
There is intensive picking of dogwood,
And no one is quite sure what poison ivy is like;
They find out the next day.
Things start off with a rush.
Everybody joins in the old songs,
And points out cloud effects,
And puts in a good word for the colour of the grass.
But after the first fifty miles,
Nature doesn't go over so big,
And singing belongs to the lost arts.
There is a slight spurt on the homestretch,
And everyone exclaims over how beautiful the lights of the city look—
I'll say they do...
Read the whole poem right here.