The New Love
If it shine or if it rain,
Little will I care or know.
Days, like drops upon a pane,
Slip, and join, and go.
At my door's another lad;
Here's his flower in my hair.
If he see me pale and sad,
Will he see me fair?
I sit looking at the floor.
Little will I think or say
If he seek another door;
Even if he stay.
– Dorothy Parker
Aficionados of silent film have probably seen some of the "working girl in the Big City" movies of the 1920s; often starring Gloria Swanson (in her first fame, before she became known mostly as Norma Desmond) or Colleen Moore, these films blend the comedy of daily life with romance, often with a wealthy (&, needless to say, handsome) young man, with the heroine always dressed a bit more stylishly than she realistically would be. Commentary tracks on DVDs of these films will often mention the new market these movies were aimed at: in the 1920s, there began to be a sizable population of young single women living on their own or with other young women, working in the Big City. New York City would be the main & ultimate example; always a bit apart from the rest of America (particularly the dull rural regions), inherently glamorous, exciting, & (inextricably linked to those two qualities) dangerous. It was also a place of greater freedom for young women. It was no longer assumed that unchaperoned women must be up to no good or no better than she should be. We're so used to young women being on their own & working to support themselves that we no longer deeply register it as the cultural shift it was.
I've also been reading through the anthology A Century of Sonnets: The Romantic Era Revival, edited by Paula R Feldman & Daniel Robertson, & in their introduction they make the interesting point that when the sonnet, the poetic form par excellence for expressing Love, was introduced to English in the Early Modern period, it usually took the form of male poets expressing their devotion to (usually) a woman, building off of Petrarch's foundational work, but when the sonnet was revived in the late eighteenth century, women poets used it to express their romantic feelings for men (culminating perhaps in the Victorian period with Barrett Browning's Sonnets from the Portuguese).
These cultural shifts were rolling around in my brain & made me think of Dorothy Parker, the celebrated wit, critic, short-story writer, & poet. She is not only an avatar of the clever, ambitious young professional woman in the Big City, but she also, as a poet, brought a new element to love poetry: not devotion or heartbreak but rueful realism, even cynicism (this is probably why her work often gets called "verse" rather than poetry, or even "light verse", a term which is just another way of dismissing the comic view as inherently less significant than the serious). Parker wrote a lot of love poems, she's not breaking away from that norm (the way Marianne Moore did), & she writes them in traditional verse forms (though not, in fact, the sonnet), but there's an element of disenchantment & wit that seems to me something new (I'm willing to be corrected on this, if someone can cite another woman poet of Parker's time or earlier who puts Love in an ironic, even dismissive light as consistently as Parker does.)
This week's poem is more somber than satirical, but it does convey a level of indifference to love that is remarkable. In fact, it's almost alarming, as these three quatrains etch a powerful image of depression. Depression, anxiety, alienation: the modern world certainly didn't invent these qualities, but it made them its own, & here they are juxtaposed with the traditional accoutrements of love poetry: appropriate weather, flowers, a lad . . . (that word, along with this poem's formal structure, reminds me of Housman's Shropshire Lad, & this poem would fit right into that collection).
The first quatrain – a whole third of the poem – doesn't even mention love, or another person, much less the "new love" promised in the title. It's a succinct portrayal of emotional numbness. The shine of the sun immediately turns into rain (& I think the order is not just for the sake of the rhyme scheme, as shine is an easy word to rhyme). The narrator can hardly distinguish between sunny & wet weather, & what's more, she doesn't really care. The distinction makes no difference to her. The days drop & blur like rain. Slip, and join, and go – the commas make us pause a bit between the words, isolating them from each other, making the process seem a bit slower, a bit more monotonous perhaps, than it really is. Perhaps underlying these words is a metaphorical intimation of what the poet's love life is like: an almost accidental joining, followed by rapid dissolution.
In the second quatrain we finally meet the new love: or is he? The title looks increasingly ironic, as we get the feeling he's just one in a not particularly distinguishable series. He is not called a lover, or a suitor, but "a lad": young, obviously, as the word implies, & also with a suggestion that he's young enough to be a bit naïve or callow – & perhaps those those qualities are inseparable from a sincerity in love. He has given her a flower! That's sweet. She has even roused herself enough to put it in her hair. He's previously given her a flower, so this is not their first time together. But apparently she has been pale & sad each time. Is that what he's drawn to? Does he see himself as a rescuer, & if so, will he stick around once he realizes she doesn't really want to be, or can't be, rescued, or if he is shown another side of her? (There seems like a witty play here on Keats's La Belle Dame Sans Merci, in which the pale & haggard one is the knight in love.)
If he see me pale and sad, / Will he see me fair? suggests that perhaps he only wants to see her pale & sad, or perhaps he won't stick around long enough for her mood to lift, or perhaps he is incapable of seeing her any way other than pale & sad: Fair can mean beautiful, specifically a beautiful woman (as in "the fair one" or "his fair", a now archaic or comic usage), but it can also mean impartial & just, or equitable (play fair!). Perhaps this "lad" can't see his lover clearly through the fogs of love.
The third & concluding quatrain combines the description of depressed enervation with the description of this unromantic romance. The narrator, even after a person has entered her rooms, is staring at the floor rather than at the visitor. This is the shadow side of Parker's wit: a persistent, perhaps even debilitating, gloom. The scene is presented as a complete sentence: I sit looking at the floor. (The punctuation in this poem is so carefully done it is a thing of beauty.) A complete sentence, & a complete summation of a mood, & perhaps a life. Little will I think or say starts the next sentence, echoing Little will I care or know in the first quatrain (little sets the mood of diminishment); the line tells us the narrator will not think or feel much: under what circumstances? Perhaps any, but specifically, whether the lad goes or stays. The order here, as with the shine or rain earlier, is significant: she will not be communicative if he leaves (how can she fall apart for love, when she is apparently already numb?). She doesn't even phrase it as "leaving her"; it's If he seek another door: not another woman, but another door, another opening into one of the isolated cells that fill the anonymous city. There is a semicolon after that phrase, marking a significant pause, & then the kicker: she will feel the same (that is, lacking in feeling) even if he stays. This is a sad & haunting poem, but also a brilliant summation of modern trends in independence, alienation, depression, & that strange wavering thing labeled love.
I took this from The Portable Dorothy Parker; my copy is ancient, but I assume the newer editions include the same poems.
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