Dorothy Parker is required reading if you're an etymology major. Her poetry betrays all words' most intimate secrets--their contours and nuances and especially their history. It takes an uncommon amount of information and arrogance to play on and with words as she does.  Like Oscar Wilde, she mounts the delightful spectacle of a first-rate mind squandering itself on wit.

Question 1 (Objective: Get a Bohemian, worldly-wise, and trés trés fatiguée attitude)

Materials required: A French cigarette, an ivory cigarette holder. Cloche optional. You cannot read Dorothy Parker properly without melodramatizing yourself. The first three lines should be read gaily, and the last line must absolutely be read in a sarcastic contralto, with eyebrows arched, rolling the r’s in Balkan fashion. She is playing in a sophisticated manner on reader expectations concerning ballad stanza (it is used for simple, sad, sentimental occasions).

Comment
Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Roumania.

Question 2 (Objective: Read aloud to bring out the tea-cup-on-your-knee balance of verbal and thought rhythms that is the essence of wit)
Full credit if your reading sounds like an arch dialogue between two women whose husbands and lovers are attending the same party. The first line is read by a "woman of a certain age," and the second by an ingenue, a vamp-in-training. Parker is playing with iambic tetrameter couplets, used in poems such as Andrew Marvell’s "To His Coy Mistress" to make witty little comments using tight little lines and clever little rhymes.

General Review of the Sex Situation
Woman wants monogamy;
Man delights in novelty.
Love is woman's moon and sun;
Man has other forms of fun.
Woman lives but in her lord;
Count to ten, and man is bored.
With this the gist and sum of it,
What earthly good can come of it?

 Question 3 (Objective: Practice counting on your fingers and drumming on the table while making wisecracks)
For full credit, label each of the following three poems with its correct metrical form, choosing from
a) Iambic tetrameter (used to emphasize playful mispronunciations of rhyming words)
b) Ballad stanza (which creates an airy tone)
c) Dactylic trimeter with one hypermetrical syllable (to play sexily on nursery rhyme meter)

For two additional points, write an essay that thoroughly explicates the classical decorum observed in the form-content relationship, including citations from relevant English poets of the Renaissance and Neo-Classical periods.

Autobiography
Oh, both my shoes are shiny new,
        And pristine is my hat;
My dress is 1922....
        My life is all like that.

Words of Comfort to Be Scratched on a Mirror
Helen of Troy had a wandering glance;
Sappho's restriction was only the sky;
Ninon was ever the chatter of France;
But oh, what a good girl am I!

De Profundis
Oh, is it, then, Utopian
To hope that I may meet a man
Who'll not relate, in accents suave,
The tales of girls he used to have?

 Question 4 (Objective: Look for sharp edges.)
Alexander Pope observed that good satire should not butcher a person but should, like an extremely sharp sword, slice entirely through the neck leaving the head in place. Locate the features that indicate that this nasty little epitaph was intended not to delight, but to dissect,  I mean instruct (the Latin poet Horace said that poetry should  mingle utile et dulce).  The stanza Porter invented for this poem uses alternating rhymes, line lengths, and double-syllable rhymes to demonstrate how far she transcends the "darling lady" intellectually.

Epitaph for a Darling Lady
All her hours were yellow sands,
Blown in foolish whorls and tassels;
Slipping warmly through her hands;
Patted into little castles.

Shiny day on shiny day
Tumbled in a rainbow clutter,
As she flipped them all away,
Sent them spinning down the gutter.

Leave for her a red young rose,
Go your way, and save your pity;
She is happy, for she knows
That her dust is very pretty.

Question 5 (Objective: Deplore doggerel and philistinism)
Rewrite this poem to smooth out its rhythm and then, after reading your version aloud, explain why the original rough rhythm was a great idea. To avoid losing points, don’t blurt any aesthetically relativistic rubbish such as "taste is personal" or chacun a son gout or de gustibus non est disputandem..

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.
 

 Question 6 (Objective: Enjoy a connect-the-dots experience of poetry writing)
For full credit, fill in the blanks to fill out the lines in any poem. Look to the rhymes for your clues. Bonus: free publication of your version on a graffiti site of your choosing if you figure out the last poem.

Oscar Wilde
If, with the literate, I am
Impelled to ____ an epigram,
I never ___ to _______ the credit;
We all assume that Oscar said it.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Should Heaven send me any son,
I ____he’s ___like Tennyson.
I'd rather have him play a ______
Than rise and bow and speak an idyll.
 
 
 
 

Answers
3. “Autobiography” is ballad stanza; “Words of Comfort to Be Scratched on a Mirror” is dactylic trimeter; “De Profundis” is iambic tetrameter.

6.
Oscar Wilde
If, with the literate, I am
Impelled to try an epigram,
I never seek to take the credit;
We all assume that Oscar said it.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Should Heaven send me any son,
I hope he's not like Tennyson.
I'd rather have him play a fiddle
Than rise and bow and speak an idyll.