Dorothy Parker, born Dorothy Rothschild on 22 August 1893 and dead on 7 June 1967, became one of the most recognizable voices of twentieth-century American letters: a poet of compressed heartbreak, a theater and book critic of dangerous precision, a short-story writer of unusual psychological acuity, a screenwriter, and a public political dissenter. For much of her life, she was treated as the emblem of a particular…
“I know that there are things that never have been funny, and never will be. And I know that ridicule may be a shield, but it is not a weapon.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Edwardian Poets, Light Verse Poets, Modernist Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Irony, Sorrow, Despair
Edna Wahlert McCourt, born Edna Wahlert on 19 July 1887 and dead on 4 January 1963, belonged to a generation of American women writers whose literary lives were often sustained through friendship, little magazines, local institutions, family networks, and persistent private labor rather than through the highly visible routes to fame available to a few celebrated contemporaries. She is remembered principally as a poet…
“And bits of his mission and his story had filtered through the masses, naturally haloing him to our elemental and, therefore, hero-worshiping crew.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Death & Mortality, Devotional Poets, Love Poets, Modernist Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Nature Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Longing, Spirituality