Death in Life and Love in Dorothy Parker's Poetry

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Death in Life and Love in Dorothy Parker's Poetry

Dorothy Parker, an accomplished American poet, exposes the darker side of human behavior through her epigrammatic style of poetry. She believed that a writer must say what he feels and sees. She specialized in the hard truths, particularly about death, in both life and love. Some major motifs present in Parker’s work include loneliness, lack of communication between men and women, disintegration of relationships, human frailties, and the affectations and hypocrisies of a patriarchal society. Parker’s wit is largely autobiographical reflecting the tumultuous years of her youth that included alcoholism, romantic disasters, and attempted suicides. The three poems provided in the text exemplify how Parker utilizes poetic devices such as irony, satire, and sarcasm to address the human frailties involved with searching for meaningful relationships and suicide.

The first poem “DeProfundis” provides a glimpse of Parker’s cynical attitude toward men and relationships. De Profundis, which translates in Latin as out of the depth, i...

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