This is the omnibus edition of the three books, archy & mehitabel (1927), archys life of mehitabel (1933), and archy does his part (1935), first collected in 1935, with White’s introduction added in the 1950 edition.

Mehitabel says “every time i go in for / a platonic friendship / it turns out plutonic,” but in fact her friendships are rarely platonic, and that’s why “life is just one damn kitten after another.” But she likes life on the town, in the cafés (she was dubbed “Puss café” early in life) and out on the fences and the garbage cans. Even at the worst of times, when she has to keep dancing to avoid freezing (“mehitabel dances with boreas”), her response is always “wotthehell” and “toujours gai” and “cheerio my deario,” “there’s a dance or two in the old dame yet,” and “ours is the zest of the alley cat.”

Archy has a number of themes that keep recurring. One is his need for self-expression; he believes that his soul once inhabited a vers libre poet before he transmigrated into a cockroach. Another is that human beings keep messing up wonderful civilizations and natural settings, so that cockroaches, ants, and other such creatures will eventually inherit it all (“what the ants are saying”). His point of view, he admits, is skewed: “i see things from / the under side” (‘ballade of the under side”). He can be a pretty acerbic observer; for example, he says “a man who is so dull / that he can learn only by personal experience / is too dull to learn / anything important by experience” (“archy on this and that”). Archy is a flâneur, a boulevardier who can go anywhere. He can always, as he says, go into a restaurant and drop into a beef stew “for a warm bath and a bite to eat.” He has the ultimate satiric spy perspective; he isn’t a fly on the wall but a cockroach on the baseboard.
Archy is a wannabe revolutionary. “archy declares war” begins “i am going to start / a revolution” and Archy vows here to organize the insects in a revolt unless they get better treatment from humans. He declares he has started a union called the Worms Turnverein. He returns to this theme often. In “the return of archy” he says
you thought i was only
an archy
but i am more than that
i am anarchy
He goes on to say he’s been organizing the insects, and there are other poems with titles such as “archy turns revolutionist.”
Archy quotes Horace’s ode that begins “eheu fugaces [Postume, Postume, labuntur anni] in “a roach of the taverns.” And there are lots of words that sent me to the dictionary (edacity, corybantic).

Archy and Mehitabel take note of the news and fashions, talking about Prohibition and its repeal, the Depression, Tutankhamen, reincarnation, vers libre, labor/management problems and strikes. ( )

A redundant volume combining the first two of Don Marquis' "archy and mehitabel" books. See the reviews of the other two books, which are compiled in this volume. ( )