This is a two-line poem by Dorothy Parker (1893-1967.) Parker, once known as the world's wittiest woman, lived most of her life in New York and was a member of a set of writers and intellectuals known as the Round Table or Vicious Circle. She was a leading critic for the New Yorker; authors dreaded her caustic comments (she wrote of one book "It is not to be tossed aside lightly, but thrown away with great force.")
Nowadays it is for her short stories and poems that Parker is best remembered; the best of these are still in print. Her poems are mostly (though not all) jokey, written in a sprightly manner that often masks a more serious message. For instance, her comic poem on suicide "Nooses give/You might as well live") refers to her own many failed suicide attempts. Her stories, while also often humorous and always extremely readable, express a bleak world view.
Nowadays it is for her short stories and poems that Parker is best remembered; the best of these are still in print. Her poems are mostly (though not all) jokey, written in a sprightly manner that often masks a more serious message. For instance, her comic poem on suicide "Nooses give/You might as well live") refers to her own many failed suicide attempts. Her stories, while also often humorous and always extremely readable, express a bleak world view.
