Ok, ok - she was a minor (if delightful) poet - a tad grumpy - rather neurotic - not always kind (understatement alert!!!!!) - but also wonderfully witty, a pleasure to many - and - I LOVE HER!!!!!!!!!!
Some mots bon:
"It's a small apartment, I've barely enough room to lay my hat
and a few friends."
On learning that Calvin Coolidge was dead she remarked,
"How could they tell?"
"Are you Dorothy Parker?" a guest at a party inquired.
"Yes, do you mind?"
"You can lead a horticulture but you can't make her think."
In a book review:
"This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly.
It should be thrown aside with great force."
In 1925, Harold Ross was struggling to keep The New Yorker
magazine alive with a tiny, inexperienced staff and an
office with one typewriter. Running into Dorothy, Ross said,
"I thought you were coming into the office to write a piece
last week. What happened?"
Dorothy replied, "Somebody was using the pencil."
"I can't write five words but that I change seven."
"Brevity is the soul of lingerie."
"I like to have a martini,
Two at the very most.
After three I'm under the table,
After four I'm under my host!"
In the street once Dorothy approached a taxi.
"I'm engaged," the cabbie said.
"Then be happy," she told him.
Wasn't the Yale prom wonderful?
"If all the girls in attendance were laid end to end,"
she said, "I wouldn't be at all surprised."
"Look at him, a rhinestone in the rough."
"Salary is no object:
I want only enough to keep body and soul apart."
"You know, that woman speaks 18 languages,
and she can't say "no" in any of them."
"His body has gone to his head."
In a 1933 review of the play "The Lake" starring Katherine
Hepburn:"Miss Hepburn runs the gamut of emotions from A to B"
"Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses."
Of the play "The House Beautiful":
"The House Beautiful is The Play Lousy."
Young man to Dorothy Parker: "I can't bear fools."
Dorothy Parker to young man: "Funny, your mother could."
In a New Yorker review of A.A. Milne's
"House at Pooh Corner": "Tonstant weader fwowed up."
Another book review:
"He is beyond question a writer of power; and his power lies in
his ability to make sex so thoroughly, graphically and
aggressively unattractive that one is fairly shaken to ponder
how little one has been missing."
When you are gone, there is nor bloom nor leaf,
Nor singing sea at night, nor silver birds;
And I can only stare, and shape my grief
In little words.
I cannot conjure loveliness, to drown
The bitter woe that racks my cords apart.
The weary pen that sets my sorrow down
Feeds at my heart.
There is no mercy in the shifting year,
No beauty wraps me tenderly about.
I turn to little words- so you, my dear,
Can spell them out.
0 Replies
dlowan
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Fri 7 Nov, 2003 07:27 am
The Flaw in Paganism
Drink and dance and laugh and lie,
Love, the reeling midnight through,
For tomorrow we shall die!
(But, alas, we never do.)
0 Replies
dlowan
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Fri 7 Nov, 2003 07:28 am
Ballade At Thirty-Five
This, no song of an ingenue,
This, no ballad of innocence;
This, the rhyme of a lady who
Followed ever her natural bents.
This, a solo of sapience,
This, a chantey of sophistry,
This, the sum of experiments
I loved them until they loved me.
Decked in garments of sable hue,
Daubed with ashes of myriad Lents,
Wearing shower bouquets of rue,
Walk I ever in penitence.
Oft I roam, as my heart repents,
Through God's acre of memory,
Marking stones, in my reverence,
"I loved them until they loved me."
Pictures pass me in long review
Marching columns of dead events.
I was tender and, often, true;
Ever a prey to coincidence.
Always knew I the consequence;
Always saw what the end would be.
We're as Nature has made us - hence
I loved them until they loved me.
0 Replies
the prince
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Fri 7 Nov, 2003 07:28 am
I had never heard of her till now !! But now I will look her up !!
I absolutely loved this...
"I like to have a martini,
Two at the very most.
After three I'm under the table,
After four I'm under my host!"
Substitute martini with whiskey and you have me
0 Replies
dlowan
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Fri 7 Nov, 2003 07:30 am
Ah - but do we want you once we do?
0 Replies
cavfancier
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Fri 7 Nov, 2003 07:31 am
I believe that 'Candy is dandy' comes from Ogden Nash.
0 Replies
dlowan
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Fri 7 Nov, 2003 07:33 am
It do.
perhaps this oughta be an Ogden Nash thread, too?
0 Replies
cavfancier
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Fri 7 Nov, 2003 07:35 am
Perhaps, another great wit.
0 Replies
dlowan
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Fri 7 Nov, 2003 07:36 am
A girl whose cheeks are covered with paint
Has an advantage with me over one whose ain't.
0 Replies
dlowan
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Fri 7 Nov, 2003 07:37 am
The Joyous Malingerer
Who is the happy husband? Why, indeed,
'Tis he who's useless in the time of need;
Who, asked to unclasp a bracelet or a neckless,
Contrives to be utterly futile, fumbling, feckless,
Or when a zipper nips his loved one's back
Cannot restore the zipper to its track.
Another time, not wishing to be flayed,
She will not use him as a lady's maid.
Stove-wise he's the perpetual backward learner
Who can't turn on or off the proper burner.
If faced with washing up he never gripes,
But simply drops more dishes than he wipes.
She finds his absence preferable to his aid,
And thus all mealtime chores doth he evade.
He can, attempting to replace a fuse,
Black out the coast from Boston to Newport News,
Or, hanging pictures, be the rookie wizard
Who fills the parlor with a plaster blizzard.
He'll not again be called to competition
With decorator or with electrician.
At last it dawns upon his patient spouse
He's better at his desk than round the house.
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dlowan
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Fri 7 Nov, 2003 07:38 am
What Almost Every Woman Knows Sooner or Later
Husbands are things that wives have to get used to putting up with.
And with whom they breakfast with and sup with.
They interfere with the discipline of nurseries,
And forget anniversaries,
And when they have been particularly remiss
They think they can cure everything with a great big kiss,
And when you tell them about something awful they have done they just
look unbearably patient and smile a superior smile,
And think, Oh she'll get over it after a while.
And they always drink cocktails faster than they can assimilate them,
And if you look in their direction they act as if they were martyrs and
you were trying to sacrifice, or immolate them,
And when it's a question of walking five miles to play golf they are very
energetic but if it's doing anything useful around the house they are
very lethargic,
And then they tell you that women are unreasonable and don't know
anything about logic,
And they never want to get up or go to bed at the same time as you do,
And when you perform some simple common or garden rite like putting
cold cream on your face or applying a touch of lipstick they seem to
think that you are up to some kind of black magic like a priestess of
Voodoo.
And they are brave and calm and cool and collected about the ailments
of the person they have promised to honor and cherish,
But the minute they get a sniffle or a stomachache of their own, why
you'd think they were about to perish,
And when you are alone with them they ignore all the minor courtesies
and as for airs and graces, they uttlerly lack them,
But when there are a lot of people around they hand you so many chairs
and ashtrays and sandwiches and butter you with such bowings and
scrapings that you want to smack them.
Husbands are indeed an irritating form of life,
And yet through some quirk of Providence most of them are really very
deeply ensconced in the affection of their wife.
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dlowan
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Fri 7 Nov, 2003 07:40 am
Ogden Nash is rather brash,
And his verses have much dash -
But when it comes to Mrs Parker
her bite is worser than her bark..er?
0 Replies
the prince
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Fri 7 Nov, 2003 07:42 am
dlowan wrote:
Ah - but do we want you once we do?
Eh ?
0 Replies
dlowan
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Fri 7 Nov, 2003 07:44 am
He came upon a midnight clear,
When all but we were sleeping -
He came with such a rush, my dear,
He left me pent, and weeping...
0 Replies
cavfancier
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Fri 7 Nov, 2003 07:45 am
Dorothy would have approved of this one from Ogden:
There is something about a Martini,
A tingle remarkably pleasant;
A yellow, a mellow Martini;
I wish I had one at present.
There is something about a Martini,
Ere the dining and dancing begin,
And to tell you the truth,
It is not the vermouth--
I think that perhaps it's the gin.
0 Replies
dlowan
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Fri 7 Nov, 2003 07:47 am
Back to Dotty:
One Perfect Rose
A single flow'r he sent me, since we met.
All tenderly his messenger he chose;
Deep-hearted, pure, with scented dew still wet-
One perfect rose.
I knew the language of the floweret;
"My fragile leaves," it said, "his heart enclose."
Love long has taken for his amulet
One perfect rose.
Why is it no one ever sent me yet
One perfect limousine, do you suppose?
Ah no, it's always just my luck to get
One perfect rose.
0 Replies
dlowan
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Fri 7 Nov, 2003 07:48 am
More Ogden:
First Child ... Second Child
FIRST
Be it a girl, or one of the boys,
It is scarlet all over its avoirdupois,
It is red, it is boiled; could the obstetrician
Have possibly been a lobstertrician?
His degrees and credentials were hunky-dory,
But how's for an infantile inventory?
Here's the prodigy, here's the miracle!
Whether its head is oval or spherical,
You rejoice to find it has only one,
Having dreaded a two-headed daughter or son;
Here's the phenomenon all complete,
It's got two hands, it's got two feet,
Only natural, but pleasing, because
For months you have dreamed of flippers or claws.
Furthermore, it is fully equipped:
Fingers and toes with nails are tipped;
It's even got eyes, and a mouth clear cut;
When the mouth comes open the eyes go shut,
When the eyes go shut, the breath is loosed
And the presence of lungs can be deduced.
Let the rockets flash and the cannon thunder,
This child is a marvel, a matchless wonder.
A staggering child, a child astounding,
Dazzling, diaperless, dumbfounding,
Stupendous, miraculous, unsurpassed,
A child to stagger and flabbergast,
Bright as a button, sharp as a thorn,
And the only perfect one ever born.
SECOND
Arrived this evening at half-past nine.
Everybody is doing fine.
Is it a boy, or quite the reverse?
You can call in the morning and ask the nurse.
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