NOT MUCH FUN
The Lost Poems of Dorothy Parker
Compiled and with an introduction
by Stuart Y. Silverstein, Scribner, 256 pages.

These 122 "lost" poems of Dorothy Parker weren't really lost. They appeared in 1920's issues of The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Life, Vogue, New York World and The Saturday Evening Post. Parker, whom Alexander Woollcott called "an odd blend of Little Nell and Lady Macbeth," whose weapon was "a lacy sleeve with a bottle of vitriol concealed in its folds," called this work verse, not poetry, and said it was "more commerce than art." She decided not to anthologize them in book form. It was the right choice.

This early work is often experimental, cliched, self-pitying, repetitious and overly long. But that doesn't mean "Not Much Fun" isn't much fun. There are a few hidden gems, such as "The Passionate Freudian To His Love," which ends: "So come dwell a while on that distant isle/ In the brilliant tropical weather;/ Where a Freud in need is a Freud indeed,/ We'll always be Jung together." Her poem "Grande Passion," too, reads like classic Parker: "If you should break your beauteous nose,/ My love would perish, I suppose;/ Or did your hair go limp and straight,/ I might again be celibate./ Were you to slide your step, and peer,/ You'd see my little back, I fear;/ But lose, my love, your soul and sense/ I should not know the difference."

Silverstein, an L.A. attorney and journalist, provides a terrific essay as introduction, filled with autobiographical data and laced with Parker's legendary wit. When an unpopular playwright's wife gave birth, Ms. Parker sent her a wire -- collect -- that said "Good luck, Mary. We all knew you had it in you." Of a broken relationship with a cad, she quipped: "It serves me right for putting all my eggs in one bastard."

According to Silverstein, Parker sold her first poem to Vanity Fair in 1915, when she was 22; was accused of plagiarism early in her career; and was a pioneer of modern English, first coining "moron," "sex appeal," and "what the hell" in print. She joined the legendary Algonquin Round Table in 1919, and began writing for The New Yorker in 1925, where she would publish more than 50 poems. She was also a book critic, playwright, acclaimed short story writer and a screenwriter in Hollywood, where she had 15 film credits and became a left-wing political activist.

Parker was plagued with depression and alcoholism her entire adult life. (The book's title comes from her famous response to a bartender who asked "What are you having?") Parker died in 1967, at age 73, of a heart attack. Though it was a sad life, it was also a productive, witty and brave one. In her poem "The Braggart," she perhaps writes her own eulogy when she says: "You will be frail and musty/ with peering, furtive head,/ While I am young and lusty/ Among the roaring dead."

-- Susan Shapiro

Susan Shapiro is a freelance writer and the author, most recently, of a humor book titled The Male to Female Dictionary (Boulevard).

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