Don Marquis (1878–1937)

- i make a debatable decision about a book review

boss
i read that book you did
about archy and mehitabel
with transmigrations and observations
on insects and alley cats
actors and aristocrats
politicians
prohibitions
and dried-up pharaohs

it was pretty good
for vers libre
humourous
satirical
not too lyrical
but wotthehell boss wotthehell
it was made into a musical

it made me chuckle
more than once
which is no mean feat
i try to be
toujours gai and jamais triste
but mehitabel i ain t

the illustrations were krazy
i show more could ve done
with more
pen scratch
line hatch
there was so much
more to draw

well
my time in
shinbone alley s
over
though i m sure to
visit agen
there s a read in
the old book yet

meanwhile i ll try
to keep
toujours gai boss toujours gai

so cheerio my deario show less

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 show more 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. show less

A book of sonnets, thirty-two of them, written with the tongue firmly planted in cheek, each of them ending in the macabre. Then we come to thirty-three and find this:
"The poet blots the end the jester wrote:
For now I drop the dull quip's forced
pretence,
Forego the perch'd fool's dubious emi
nence-..."

And what follows are some very fine lines, perhaps just to prove he's capable. Then we have the poetry of famous love affairs at the end. Again, silly, silly stuff, such as:

"Paris was a show more pretty gent,
His lamps were quite hypnotic;
He used the most expensive scent;
His tastes were...well, erotic."

This is by no means politically correct reading, and some bits are downright offensive to our 21st century sensibilities. There is the racism and slang of the early 1920s. One becomes rather tired of the mocking tone, and then the last comes along and blows you away.

HARLEQUIN AND COLUMBINE
“When the soul of the year through its body
of earth
Burst forth in a bloom as of fire,
And the butterflies rose in a rainbow riot
of mirth
To flutter and burn and take wing and
aspire,
To her garden our Columbine came…
She was light as her laughter, and bright
as blown flame-
Flower, woman and music, and all these the same.”

What follows is the most moving tale of Harlequin and Columbine I have ever read. Through it all I saw the pantomime Lord Peter played in Murder Must Advertise, and really, I have to wonder if Dorothy L. Sayers read this poem before she wrote that. For the last poem alone I raised this to four stars instead of three. show less

Three Archy and Mehitabel books in a 1940 omnibus edition, with the illustrations by George Herriman. The point of Archy and Mehitabel for me has always been Mehitabel -- the indomitable cat who deals with endless reverses of fortune, and with the major consequences of minor misteps (just one damned kitten after another), but remains toujours gai, toujours gai. (I inherited this book from my mother, who loved it dearly, and may have overidentified with Mehitabel). But there is much more to show more Archy and Mehitabel than one proto-feminist cat. It captures an era that in some ways feels as distant as colonial days; it is fiction written in eminently readable verse (not a easy trick), and it has those great illustrations. Also, this volume has one of the great dedications of all times: "dedicated to babs
with babs knows what and babs knows why". show less