Criticism > Poetry > Parker, Dorothy - Monica Redlich (review date 1937)

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Monica Redlich (review date 1937)

SOURCE: A review of Not So Deep as a Well, in The Spectator, Vol. 5677, April 16, 1937, p. 726.

[In this review, Redlich supports Parker's poetry for its unembellished deceptions of “the vanity of human wishes.”]

Miss Parker's short stories are a perennial delight, and her verse is of the same calibre. No other writer can so perfectly portray not only sophistication but the obverse of sophistication—the knotted back of the canvas, the tangle of emotion and passion and fear that shall never be seen in public. “Chant for Dark Hours” is the title of one of her poems. It would stand as the title for three-quarters of her book—and it is a dialogue between a woman who waits for a dilatory lover and that part of her mind which utterly despises herself for doing so. Conflict, self-mockery, disillusion, regret—anything but happiness is the subject of her poems, and if by any chance she catches...

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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