Writers on Writers

Dorothy Parker on the Algonquin Round Table
(1919-1929)

You can lead a horticulture
but you can’t make her think.

So quick with the wit
I wrote little poems
satirizing rich matrons
their banalities, bigotries
and Vogue published me
and hired me
editorial assistant
then staff writer
at Vanity Fair
a magazine
of no opinions
while I
had plenty.

I was a tough critic
a real New York wag
like one of the boys
at the big round table
at the Algonquin Hotel
in the speakeasy days
cracking lines about booze
and dries who didn’t drink
from our flasks we jousted
with our pointed repartee
our competition cutthroat.

Brevity is the soul of lingerie.

The word got around
about the wonks at the Gonk
in the Rose Room for hours
our antics soon fodder
for newspaper columnists
in our little group that grew
and grew larger
sometimes fifteen,
sixteen hangers-on
all woozy afternoon.

We dubbed ourselves
the Vicious Circle
during the terrible days
of wisecracks, cuts
deeper, more bloody
we went for the jugular
for public attention
however we could grab it
Tallulah, Harpo Marx
New York Times writers
New Yorker founders
cynics, comics, all of us
sophisticated, cruel.

Men seldom make passes
At girls who wear glasses

I lived on the second floor
came down to join in
raising hell every day
nothing else mattered
but jazz clubs and brothels
Haig & Haig and bathtub
gin under the table
pharmacies floating
on a sea of booze.

A hangover is
the wrath of grapes.

Lured away we fled west
stampeding the studios
to work on the talkies
the roaring twenties dying
with a whimper, not a bang.

Carson McCullers

I was born a man

Lula Carson Smith
in the silent crazy jungle
floral lush greenery
a middle class family
jeweler father slouchy
devoted mother, siblings
in a textile town with mills
a base, soldiers, Jim Crow
suffering, loneliness, poverty.

Repairing watches and clocks
popular in the Depression
Father bought us a house
camellias, tall holly
outside the window where
I practiced piano
music the foundation
until I abandoned it
turned to the typewriter
stories the new medium
of self-expression, art.

I was born a man

so changed my name
to match my real self
a lanky colt with
a Peter Pan quality
wild ideas and energy
until illness hit
when I was 15
and again, and again
the trickery and terror of time

as I later learned
rheumatic heart disease
damaged my poor heart.

Elizabeth Bishop on Her “Friends”

My life was one
of words and whiskey
deep contemplation
keen observation
of nature, people
farmers and factory workers
fishermen, fish, the Amazon
jungle, the beach
lovers, birds, moose
all around me life—
difficult, full of joy.

I was born to wealth
New England bluenose
world of privilege

until my father died
I was 8 months old
my mother unraveling
chronic psychosis, unfit
left me with her parents
in a Nova Scotia village
where I grew up happy
running around barefoot
taking the cow to pasture
past gabled wood houses
low hills, tall elms, leaning
willows and kind villagers
we all sang hymns
at the church picnics

until my father’s parents
horrified by my wildness
took me back to Mass
to their cold city manse
where Uncle Jack teased
where I coughed and coughed
until they sent me
to breathe ocean air
with dear Aunt Maud
and I read and read
in my little sickbed
and I fell in love
with the Victorian poets.

Maud’s husband a sadist
abused us, hit, groped
at an early age
I learned about men
who would hurt you
if you let them—
after that
I never did.

I played the piano
swam and sailed
in the long summers
I visited Nova Scotia
until boarding school
Vassar and a life
of whiskey and words

and women lovers
I always called “friends.”

Elizabeth Bishop on Her Thirst

I was a baby in a crib
on the bay at Marblehead Neck
when the Great Salem Fire
brought in the boats
frightened survivors
a red sky, intense heat.

Awake, alone, afraid
I cried out for mother
thirsty and scared
but she did not come
I could see out the window
she stood in the front yard
white dress rosy from fire
billowing in the heat
serving coffee and food
to thousands left homeless
one thousand were dead.

Alone, awake, afraid
all night I called out
thirsty and scared
but nobody came.

I grew up without her
drinking and drinking
whiskey straight to oblivion
for the rest of my life
I drank and I drank
it was never enough
still thirsty, afraid
and alone.