SOURCE: Kinney, Arthur F. “Her Accomplishment: Poetry, Fiction, Criticism.” In Dorothy Parker, pp. 86-153. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1998.

In the following excerpt, Kinney traces Parker's poetic development.

Premises: “call Her by My Name”

A rewarding way to study Parker's mature work is to see how she embodies in it more and more of her own life. We [can see] how a work as impersonal as Close Harmony can risk becoming trivial and how, conversely, a play as personal and autobiographical as The Ladies of the Corridor can gain richness, substance, and authority. Parker had learned in writing her plays, as she did in the evolution of her essays and light verse, the inherent value in imaginative application of experience, starting with a personal perspective as a handy persona and moving, more and more, toward a personal aesthetic. Voicings multiply, contradict, appear and recede, denote and imply. “The content...