Criticism > Poetry > Parker, Dorothy - Edmund Wilson (review date 1927)

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Edmund Wilson (review date 1927)

SOURCE: “Dorothy Parker's Poems,” in The New Republic, Vol. XLIX, No. 633, January 19, 1927, p. 256.

[Wilson compares and contrasts Parker's poetry to that of her contemporaries, noting in particular those elements which make her work distinctive.]

Mrs. Dorothy Parker began her poetic career as a writer of humorous verse of the school of Franklin P. Adams. There are specimens of her early vein in [Enough Rope]: a comic roundel, a rondeau redoublé “(and scarcely worth the trouble, at that)” and a parody of some verses of Gilbert. Mrs. Parker's special invention (aside from her vers libre “hymns of hate,” unrepresented here), was a kind of burlesque sentimental lyric which gave the effect, till you came to the end, of a typical magazine filler, perhaps a little more authentically felt and a little better written than the average: the last line, however, punctured the rest with incredible...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Edmund Wilson (review date 1927)
   2. The New York Times Book Review (review date 1927)
   3. Marie Luhrs (review date 1927)
   4. William Rose Benét (review date 1928)
   5. Garreta Busey (review date 1928)
   6. Henry Seidel Canby (review date 1931)
   7. Percy Hutchison (review date 1931)
   8. Harold Rosenberg (essay date 1931)
   9. William Rose Benét (review date 1936)
   10. Louis Kronenberger (review date 1936)
   11. Monica Redlich (review date 1937)
   12. Edith H. Walton (review date 1928)
   13. Arthur F. Kinney (essay date 1998)
   14. Arthur F. Kinney (essay date 1998)
4. Copyright

1. Dorothy Parker
2. How to Analyze a Poem
3. Poetry