Poetry Collection Blog Post - Kayla Beebout

Death and Taxes by Dorothy Parker

Dorothy Parker was born in 1893 in New Jersey.  She grew up used to tragedy, because her mother and step-mother both died when she was young, her uncle died on the Titanic in 1912, and her father died the following year.  She only attended school until she was 14.  She sold poems to Vanity Fair and was an editor for Vogue.  She was one of the first editors of the New Yorker, and published three anthologies of poetry: Enough Rope (1926), Sunset Gun (1928), and Death and Taxes (1931).  She also published several short stories.  She was widely acclaimed while alive, but suffered from depression and alcoholism.  She had three marriages (although one was a remarriage to her first husband).  She died of a heart attack at age 73, leaving her literary estate to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The selection Death and Taxes focuses on death and issues like love and the “taxing” things of life.  The series of short poems “Tombstones in the Starlight” discusses the relative worth and fates of the owners of several tombstones.  She uses this to comment on the uselessness of extravagance by saying that a rich man who would “have the best, and that was none too good” (l. 9) would end up “[entertaining] the most exclusive worms” (l. 12).  Although he wanted everything a certain way in life, he gained nothing from it in the end.  She also comments on the hard work of poets, the flightiness of some women, and the irritability of critics.  Her poem “Distance” focuses on what she sees at the irony of love: that “it were a sweet and gallant pain/ To be a sea apart;/ But, oh, to have you down the lane/ Is bitter to my heart” (ll. 5-8).  This twist on the ideal of love shows her own ideals.  Her poem “Ballade of a Talked-Off Ear” delves more into the annoyances of life, discussing the useless things people tend to talk about and pleading for them to give her a moments’ peace.

Of a Woman, Dead Young

If she had been beautiful, even,
Or wiser than women about her,
Or had moved with a certain defiance;
If she had had sons at her sides,
And she with her hands on their shoulders,
Sons, to make troubled the Gods-
But where was there wonder in her?
What had she, better or eviler,
Whose days were a pattering of peas
From the pod to the bowl in her lap?

That the pine tree is blasted by lightning,
And the bowlder split raw from the mountain,
And the river dried short in its rushing-
That I can know, and be humble.
But that They who have trodden the stars
Should turn from Their echoing highway
To trample a daisy, unnoticed
In a meadow of small, open flowers-
Where is Their triumph in that?
Where is Their pride, and Their vengeance?

This poem consists of two stanzas of ten lines each, which have no particular rhyme scheme or meter.  In general, the lines contain nine syllables each, but that is not a hard and fast rule, and the lines do not consist of certain types of feet.  The lack of rhyme and meter contributes to her message that the death of the young woman was unnecessary, without rhyme or reason.  More than just talking about this woman, though, she speaks of the deaths of many such people: young, innocent, with no fame or infamy.  She is questioning that such people should die, that the forces of nature which fell so many other things should even bother to cause such little tragedies.  In this anthology, it adds a very poignant note in the midst of some of the poems that talk of matters that are more mundane.  It touches the part of each of us that questions the use of death and tragedy, and does so in a more coherent way than most of us ever do.

When Parker writes in free verse, her poetry style is similar to mine; however, hers is clearer than mine generally is.  She also uses poetry structures that I usually do not, such as the sonnet.  Many of her poems are very short, and mine tend to be longer.  I have also touched on the theme of love, but I have not written much about death in my poetry.  I have written more about nature and themes such as truth and constancy.  I feel compelled to explore themes relating to light and darkness, especially as evidenced in individuals.  People have this constant battle of light and dark within them, and this has started to play a larger role in contemporary storytelling.  I would like to examine this in my own way, maybe looking at a spectrum of it or how it affects people and their actions towards others.  By expressing this through poetry, I could do it through language and imagery that resonates with me in a more succinct way than a story.

Parker, Dorothy. "Death and Taxes (1931)." Complete Poems. Ed. Penguin Group. New York City: Penguin, 1999. 157-97. Print.

Academy of American Poets. "Dorothy Parker." Poets.org. Academy of American Poets, n.d. Web. 07 Jan. 2016.

Parker, Dorothy. "Of a Woman, Dead Young." Allpoetry.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 7 Jan. 2016.