LITERATURE: Parker

Okay, so I’ll probably flunk Nutrition because there’s so much to read, so much to write.  No, not in the course–although that’s heavily overloaded with both, but in my choice of reading and my story-telling of writing.

And I didn’t think I’d linger in Parker’s poetry, but I found myself reading almost every one, though skipping through them until the irony, the bitter pungency of Parker’s wit caught me sharply in its grip.  I had to stop and appreciate it.  I don’t know that she’s any great poet but there are some ideas and language use, especially the ones on death that are truly novel and enjoyable.  There are so many, so many, but this one I’ve managed to find quickly, a stanza from "Braggart": 

"You will be pale and musty
With peering, furtive head,
Whilst I am young and lusty
Among the roaring dead."

But Parker’s forte is in the short story, and within that, in revealing character in her characters that they try their best to hide.  "The Wonderful Old Gentleman" is a story of a middle-aged couple, not wealthy, who are sitting with the wife’s sister, a well-to-do, well-married lady, in the couple’s living room waiting for their father to die. 

Parker’s description of scene in this story is overwhelming with details that are intriguing in their variety, and yet are necessary to set the tone of the story as well as to reveal the people who have chosen the items to display around the home.  Each piece comes alive:  "Just above him hung a steel engraving of a chariot race, the dust flying, the chariots careening wildly, the drivers ferociously lashing their maddened horses, the horses themselves caught by the artist the moment before their hearts burst, and they dropped in their traces."

And here, perhaps a lesson in writing story:  "a colored print, showing a railroad crossing, with a train flying relentlessly towards it, and a low, red automobile trying to dash across the track before the iron terror shattered it into eternity."   This piece, it is noted, makes guests uncomfortable.  Just as Parker’s story makes us feel since we are judging the two sisters by their conversation and how they play with words, skirting the real issues between them for sake of decorum.

Masterful.  Simply amazing how well Parker knows what to place where within the narrative.