Dorothy Parker's "The Trifler"

The Daily Poem

Goldberry Studios

Education For Kids, Arts, Kids & Family

4.6 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 2 October 2024

⏱️ 5 minutes

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Summary

Dorothy Parker (née Rothschild; August 22, 1893 – June 7, 1967) was an American poet and writer of fiction, plays and screenplays based in New York; she was known for her caustic wisecracks, and eye for 20th-century urban foibles.

Parker rose to acclaim, both for her literary works published in magazines, such as The New Yorker, and as a founding member of the Algonquin Round Table. Following the breakup of the circle, Parker traveled to Hollywood to pursue screenwriting. Her successes there, including two Academy Award nominations, were curtailed when her involvement in left-wing politics resulted in her being placed on the Hollywood blacklist.

Dismissive of her own talents, she deplored her reputation as a "wisecracker". Nevertheless, both her literary output and reputation for sharp wit have endured. Some of her works have been set to music.

-bio via Wikipedia

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to The Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios. I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Wednesday, October 2, 2024. Today's poem comes from Dorothy Parker, a great early 20th century poet, short story author, essayist, critic, and all-around renowned wit. She published for many years essays, reviews, and
0:25.5	short fiction in the New Yorker. She was a founding member of the New York Literary Circle known as
0:31.1	the Algonquin Roundtable. And the poem we're reading from her today is called The Trifler.
0:36.7	I'll read it once, offer a few comments, and read it one more time.
0:41.1	The Trifler.
0:44.1	Deaths, the lover that I'd be taking.
0:46.8	Wild and fickle and fierce as he.
0:49.5	Smalls his care if my heart be breaking.
0:52.0	Gay young death would have none of me.
0:56.4	Hear them clack of my haste to greet him. No one other my mouth had kissed. I had dressed me in silk to meet him. False young
1:02.9	death would not hold the trist. Slows the blood that was quick and stormy, smooth and cold is the
1:08.8	bridal bed. I must wait till he whistles for me. Proud young
1:12.9	death would not turn his head. I must wait till my breast is wilted. I must wait till my back is bowed.
1:19.4	I must rock in the corner jilted. Death went galloping down the road. Gones my heart with a trifling rover.
1:29.8	Fine he was in the game he played,
1:35.2	kissed and promised and threw me over and rode away with a prettier maid.
1:48.0	This poem is very much in keeping with some of the witty strands that run through Parker's poetry.
1:57.6	She can be very earnest and sentimental, although at times she condemned that sort of thing in the writing as of others.
2:05.7	But often there is an edge, a witty, cutting edge to her poetry.
2:13.8	But in fairness to Dorothy, it's often self-deprecating in its edginess or in its wit.
2:19.9	And this poem is a great example. Many of her poems are lovers, laments, and indictments of the sorts of men she encounters in her circles. And here, that complaint or
2:29.7	indictment is taken to the utmost, through the use of bathlos, the sort of mock epic tone in which she is
	...

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