‎Close your eyes & imagine the best version of you possible. That’s who you really are, let go of any part of you that doesn't believe it.

The Red Dress

"I always saw, I always said,

If I were grown and free,

I'd have a gown of reddest red

As fine as you could see.

To wear out walking, sleek and slow,

Upon a summer day,

And there'd be one to see me so

And flip the world away.

And he would be a gallant one, 

With stars behind his eyes,

And hair like metal in the sun,

And lips too warm for lies.

I always saw us, gay and good,

High honored in the town.

Now I am grown to womanhood....

I have the silly gown."

Dorothy Parker

This was my favorite poem in high school. Mrs. Barth, my 11th grade English teacher, taught us about Dorothy Parker during our poetry section. She said that Parker was the epitome of a "broad". I loved that. I loved that she smoked and drank and kept up with the men in her circles without feeling like she had to act like a lady. Her poetry is sarcastic and absolutely drenched with cynicism. She was my kinda gal! Some of her best quotes can be found here.

Dorothy Parker

Reddest Red

 I wrote a lot of poetry throughout high school and in my early college years, and then when I was a junior I took an actual poetry course as part of my requirement as an English major. We all had to submit poems to the entire class for them to evaluate and critique. Of course I had to go first... my first poem was bright and happy and it rhymed - my God it rhymed!!! You'd have thought I was a kindergartner the way these people looked at me. Even the professor talked down to me like I was a child.

"My dear, while this is a very cute piece of work, it's not what I'm looking for. I want you to search yourself and write the things that you think, but you're too afraid to say."

Well...

No.

I didn't know these people. I didn't like a lot of them after what they did to my bright and happy rhyming poem (red pen, EVERYWHERE!). The last thing I was going to do now was open up to them. So I sat silently through the rest of the semester not participating in the critiquing of anyone else's work. Everyone else, of course, had these dark and "meaningful" poems that didn't rhyme (but of course), and didn't make any sense to me. 

When it came time to have our one on one evaluations with the professor, he asked me to bring two poems of mine, and my favorite poem of someone else's. I brought him two poems I had written in which I had attempted to do what he wanted. I made them "prose" style, I made them deep (or as deep as I was comfortable going), and I didn't dare make them about anything positive. And then I also brought The Red Dress with me as my favorite poem of someone else's. 

He read my two pieces while we sat together at a table in our university's common area with persed lips and his hand on his chin. 

"Well these show improvement, but I still don't think they're authentic. I'm not doubting that you wrote them, I'm just doubting that you really feel these things."

I bit my tongue and nodded slowly but what I really wanted to say was, "Welp. I'm sorry I'm not Edgar Allen Poe, but this is the best you're going to get out of me. I can write you a lovey dovey poem, or a short story, or anything else really, but I'm not going to willingly bring myself down to the depths of despair for the sake of a grade. So take these two attempts, and shove them up your goatee-wearing, shower-needing, corduroy-loving keester you GD hippy."

I looked at him with glazed-over eyes thinking, "Are we done yet? I have Friends DVDs to watch and Chik-Fil-A to eat", but then he got to Parker's piece. 

"Ah. This explains a lot. You're a fan of hers."

I blinked.

"Not that that's a bad thing, not at all. She was brilliant. It was just a different style. A different approach than what is popular today."

Well ain't that a kick in the head. I didn't know I was supposed to be conforming to what was popular in language arts class. I'm pretty sure that's the opposite of what teachers had been instilling in me since the beginning. "Be yourself." "Stay true to you."

I wanted so badly to argue with him but he was so arrogant and so... above it all, that there was no point. I got a C in the class and was never so happy for a semester to end.  

Looking back I wish I would have been a little bit more like Dorothy Parker at that meeting. I wish I would have told that professor to shove it, while swilling a scotch and lighting a cigarette. 

Via