Life — August 18, 1921 — page 3: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# "Absence" by Dorothy Parker This page presents a poem titled "Absence" by Dorothy Parker, a celebrated American writer known for witty, often melancholic verse about relationships. The poem explores emotional loss—the speaker never anticipated how profoundly their beloved's departure would affect nature itself (the sky losing color, birds ceasing song). The accompanying illustration depicts a mother and child by a fence near water, with the child ("Bobbie") explaining to his mother that his playmates are teaching him to swear. The caption's gentle humor—the boy admitting they "ain't much good at it"—provides comic relief to Parker's more serious meditation on absence and the unexpected ways loss reshapes our perception of the world.