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 my heroes:

 Dylan Thomas, Boys of Summer, pt II, v 5-20

 

We are the dark deniers, let us summon
Death from a summer woman,
A muscling life from lovers in their cramp,
From the fair dead who flush the sea
The bright-eyed worm on Davy's lamp,
And from the planted womb the man of straw.

We summer boys in this four-winded spinning,
Green of the seaweed's iron,
Hold up the noisy sea and drop her birds,
Pick the world's ball of wave and froth
To choke the deserts with her tides,
And comb the county gardens for a wreath.

In spring we cross our foreheads with the holly,
Heigh ho the blood and berry,
And nail the merry squires to the trees;
Here love's damp muscle dries and dies,
Here break a kiss in no love's quarry.
O see the poles of promise in the boys.

 

 

 
                    

              Interview by Dorothy Parker


                   The ladies men admire, I’ve heard,

                   Would shudder at a wicked word                               .

                   Their candle gives a single light;

                   They’d rather stay at home at night.

                   They do not keep awake till three,

                    Nor read erotic poetry.

                    They never sanction the impure,

                    Never  recognize an overture.

                    They shrink from powders and from paints ...  

 

So far, I’ve had no complaints.

                           

 

 

 

                          Resume`

                            Razors pain you;
              Rivers are damp;
              Acids stain you;
              And drugs cause cramp.
              Guns aren't lawful;
              Nooses give;
              Gas smells awful;
              You might as well live.

 

 

         

                                                      Unfortunate Coincidence

                                         

                                         By the time you swear your his

                                                    shivering and sighing

                                                    and he vows his passion is

                                          Infinite, undying

                                                    Lady make a note of this,

                                          one of you is lying.

 


 

During the 1920s, Parker traveled to Europe several times. She befriended Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, socialites Gerald and Sarah Murphy, and contributed articles to the New Yorker and Life. While her work was successful and she was well-regarded for her wit and conversational abilities, she suffered from depression and alcoholism and attempted suicide.

In 1929, she won the O. Henry Award for her autobiographical short story "Big Blonde." She produced short fiction in the early 1930s, and also began writing drama reviews for the New Yorker. In 1934, Parker married actor-writer Alan Campbell in New Mexico; the couple relocated to Los Angeles and became a highly paid screenwriting team. They labored for MGM and Paramount on mostly forgettable features, the highlight being an Academy Award nomination for A Star Is Born in 1937. They divorced in 1947, and remarried in 1950.

 

Parker, who became a socialist in 1927 when she became involved in the Sacco and Vanzetti trial, was called before the House on Un-American Activities in 1955.

She pleaded the Fifth Amendment.

 

Parker was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1959 and was a visiting professor at California State College in Los Angeles in 1963.

That same year, her husband died of an overdose.

On June 6, 1967, Parker was found dead of a heart attack in a New York City hotel at age 73. A firm believer in civil rights, she bequeathed her literary estate to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Upon his assassination some months later, the estate was turned over to the NAACP.

"You can't take it with you,

and if you did it would probably melt."

  

    

 

 

Edna St. Vincent Millay    

                          

                                                           

 

                                                          

 

                               Dirge Without Music,

            

I am not resigned to the shutting away of
loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be,
for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely.
Crowned With lilies and with laurel they go;
but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.
The answers quick and keen, the honest look,
the laughter, the love,—

They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses.
Elegant and curled is the blossom.
Fragrant is the blossom. I know.
But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes
than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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