Sunday, June 11, 2023

Poetry Sunday


Dorothy Parker was one of the most brilliant and pithy commentators ever to snarkily grace a page. A charter member of the famous Algonquin Round Table, she traded barbs with the best of them while churning out a huge amount of clever prose and poetry. 


Today's poem is typical Parker, and might be recited by a lot of disgruntled people today ...

Symptom Recital
by Dorothy Parker

I do not like my state of mind;
I'm bitter, querulous, unkind.
I hate my legs, I hate my hands, I do not yearn for lovelier lands.
I dread the dawn's recurrent light;
I hate to go to bed at night.
I snoot at simple, earnest folk.
I cannot take the gentlest joke.
I find no peace in paint or type.
My world is but a lot of tripe.
I'm disillusioned, empty-breasted.
For what I think, I'd be arrested.
I am not sick, I am not well.
My quondam dreams are shot to hell.
My soul is crushed, my spirit sore;
I do not like me any more.
I cavil, quarrel, grumble, grouse.
I ponder on the narrow house.
I shudder at the thought of men....
I'm due to fall in love again.

I was born too late, and in the wrong place, to ever have met Dorothy Parker, but the humorist and curmudgeon in me thinks I'd have liked her ...

I cavil, quarrel, grumble, grouse.
I ponder on the narrow house.

Have a good day and enjoy the rest of your weekend. More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

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