Note to self upon completing interview for Apex Digest: Reading biographies of Dorothy Parker vastly improves the quality of one's interview replies, or at least makes one imagine so at the time.

In truth, "The Maid-Servant at the Inn" is probably overly sentimental; I've always liked it because I find it difficult, knowing what Jesus was going to do and what was going to happen to him, to view the Nativity as a scene of transcendent joy. There is that, of course, but there is also the terrible foreknowledge. Even if you don't believe in it all, which I'm not sure I do, it is an appallingly sad story.

(Meanwhile, Chris brings me an Easter greeting card with a picture of a crucified Christ and a bunny offering him a chocolate egg: "Have an egg, you'll feel better!" Inside, it says, "If you laughed at this card, you are going to Hell.")

Anyway, Dorothy Parker's great strength in verse was not the sentimental stuff she wrote for the newspapers, but the clever, frequently self-mocking doggerel of the sort I also enjoy doing occasionally (though she was my superior times a million). Here's one I like better by her:

Portrait of the Artist

Oh, lead me to a quiet cell
Where never footfall rankles,
And bar the window passing well,
And gyve my wrists and ankles.

Oh, wrap my eyes with linen fair,
With hempen cord go bind me,
And, of your mercy, leave me there,
Nor tell them where to find me.

Oh, lock the portal as you go,
And see its bolts be double ...
Come back in half an hour or so,
And I will be in trouble.