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February 13, 2020 at 6:48 am #483964
Archy and Mehitabel, by Don Marquis. I read this stuff when I was a little kid and still love it.
Archy and Mehitabel (styled as archy and mehitabel) are the names of two fictional characters created in 1916, by Don Marquis, a columnist for The Evening Sun newspaper in New York City. Archy, a cockroach, and Mehitabel, an alley cat, appeared in hundreds of humorous verses and short stories in Marquis’ daily column, “The Sun Dial”. Their exploits were first collected in the 1927 book archy and mehitabel, which remains in print today, and in two later volumes, archys life of mehitabel (1933) and archy does his part (1935). Many editions are recognized by their iconic illustrations by George Herriman, the creator of Krazy Kat.
Marquis introduced Archy into his daily newspaper column at New York’s Evening Sun. Archy — whose name was always written in lower case in the book titles, but was upper case when Marquis would write about him in narrative form — was a cockroach who had been a free verse poet in a previous life, and took to writing stories and poems on an old typewriter at the newspaper office when everyone in the building had left. Archy would climb up onto the typewriter and hurl himself at the keys, laboriously typing out stories of the daily challenges and travails of a cockroach. Archy’s best friend was Mehitabel, an alley cat. The two of them shared a series of day-to-day adventures that made satiric commentary on daily life in the city during the 1910s and 1920s.
Because he was a cockroach, Archy was unable to operate the shift key on the typewriter (he jumped on each key to type; since using shift requires two keys to be pressed simultaneously, he physically could not use capitals), and so all of his verse was written without capitalization or punctuation. (Writing in his own persona, though, Marquis always used correct capitalization and punctuation. As E. B. White wrote in his introduction to The Lives and Times of Archy and Mehitabel, it would be incorrect to conclude that, “because Don Marquis’s cockroach was incapable of operating the shift key of a typewriter, nobody else could operate it.”)
This is Archy’s first introduction to Marquis.
expression is the need of my soul
i was once a vers libre bard
but i died and my soul went into the body of a cockroach
it has given me a new outlook upon life
i see things from the under side now
thank you for the apple peelings in the wastepaper basket
but your paste is getting so stale i cant eat it
there is a cat here called mehitabel i wish you would have
removed she nearly ate me the other night why dont she
catch rats that is what she is supposed to be fore
there is a rat here she should get without delaymost of these rats here are just rats
but this rat is like me he has a human soul in him
he used to be a poet himself
night after night i have written poetry for you
on your typewriter
and this big brute of a rat who used to be a poet
comes out of his hole when it is done
and reads it and sniffs at it
he is jealous of my poetry
he used to make fun of it when we were both human
he was a punk poet himself
and after he has read it he sneers
and then he eats iti wish you would have mehitabel kill that rat
or get a cat that is onto her job
and i will write you a series of poems showing how things look
to a cockroach
that rats name is freddy
the next time freddy dies i hope he wont be a rat
but something smaller i hope i will be a rat
in the next transmigration and freddy a cockroach
i will teach him to sneer at my poetry thendont you ever eat any sandwiches in your office
i haven’t had a crumb of bread for i dont know how long
or a piece of ham or anything but apple parings
and paste and leave a piece of paper in your machine
every night you can call me archySong of Mehitabel
Archy speaks the intro and outro to Marquis–“boss”–the rest is Mehitabel herself. “Toujours gai” means “always light hearted,” “gay” in the old sense of the word. I love this–wotthehell wotthehell.
this is the song of mehitabel
of mehitabel the alley cat
as i wrote you before boss
mehitabel is a believer
in the pythagorean
theory of the transmigration
of the soul and she claims
that formerly her spirit
was incarnated in the body
of cleopatra
that was a long time ago
and one must not be
surprised if mehitabel
has forgotten some of her
more regal mannersi have had my ups and downs
but wotthehell wotthehell
yesterday sceptres and crowns
fried oysters and velvet gowns
and today i herd with bums
but wotthehell wotthehell
i wake the world from sleep
as i caper and sing and leap
when i sing my wild free tune
wotthehell wotthehell
under the blear eyed moon
i am pelted with cast off shoon
but wotthehell wotthehelldo you think that i would change
my present freedom to range
for a castle or moated grange
wotthehell wotthehell
cage me and i d go frantic
my life is so romantic
capricious and corybantic
and i m toujours gai toujours gaii know that i am bound
for a journey down the sound
in the midst of a refuse mound
but wotthehell wotthehell
oh i should worry and fret
death and i will coquette
there s a dance in the old dame yet
toujours gai toujours gaii once was an innocent kit
wotthehell wotthehell
with a ribbon my neck to fit
and bells tied onto it
o wotthehell wotthehell
but a maltese cat came by
with a come hither look in his eye
and a song that soared to the sky
and wotthehell wotthehell
and i followed adown the street
the pad of his rhythmical feet
o permit me again to repeat
wotthehell wotthehellmy youth i shall never forget
but there s nothing i really regret
wotthehell wotthehell
there s a dance in the old dame yet
toujours gai toujours gaithe things that i had not ought to
i do because i ve gotto
wotthehell wotthehell
and i end with my favorite motto
toujours gai toujours gaiboss sometimes i think
that our friend mehitabel
is a trifle too gayFebruary 13, 2020 at 9:53 pm #947069Hmmm… it appears nobody reads here.
Saintlukesguild-http://stlukesguild.tumblr.com/
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty—that is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know." - John Keats
"Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves that they have a better idea."- John Ciardi
February 13, 2020 at 10:57 pm #947078Hmmm… it appears nobody reads here.
On the contrary – we’re too busy reading to have time to reply to the thread.
I recently finished Steven Pinker’s Enlightenment Now, the greatest plea for science, reason and technology since Carl Sagan. Musket won’t like it because it is fairly optimistic about the future.
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http://brianvds.blogspot.co.za/February 14, 2020 at 7:37 am #947091Right now, I’m reading (and liking) this Salman Rushdie book…the first time I’ve read anything by him. It’s very…whimsically involved…and that’s my own dumb review. But here’s the Wiki description: “Inspired by Miguel de Cervantes’ classic novel Don Quixote, Quichotte is a metafiction that tells the story of an addled Indian American man who travels across America in pursuit of a celebrity television host with whom he has become obsessed.” And here’s the opening paragraph….
Chapter One: Quichotte, an old Man, falls in Love, embarks on a Quest, & becomes a Father
There once lived, at a series of temporary addresses across the United States of America, a traveling man of Indian origin, advancing years, and retreating mental powers, who, on account of his love for mindless television, had spent far too much of his life in the yellow light of tawdry motel rooms watching an excess of it, and had suffered a peculiar form of brain damage as a result. He devoured morning shows, daytime shows, late-night talk shows, soaps, situation comedies, Lifetime movies, hospital dramas, police series, vampire and zombie serials, the dramas of housewives from Atlanta, New Jersey, Beverly Hills, and New York, the romances and quarrels of hotel-fortune princesses and self-styled shahs, the cavortings of individuals made famous by happy nudities, the fifteen minutes of fame accorded to young persons with large social media followings on account of their plastic-surgery acquisition of a third breast or their post-rib-removal figures that mimicked the impossible shape of the Mattel company’s Barbie doll, or even, more simply, their ability to catch giant carp in picturesque settings while wearing only the tiniest of string bikinis; as well as singing competitions, cooking competitions, competitions for business propositions, competitions for business apprenticeships, competitions between remote-controlled monster vehicles, fashion competitions, competitions for the affections of both bachelors and bachelorettes, baseball games, basketball games, football games, wrestling bouts, kickboxing bouts, extreme sports programming, and, of course, beauty contests.
February 14, 2020 at 7:42 am #947061On the contrary – we’re too busy reading to have time to reply to the thread.
I recently finished Steven Pinker’s [I]Enlightenment Now[/I], the greatest plea for science, reason and technology since Carl Sagan. Musket won’t like it because it is fairly optimistic about the future.
Two words– climate change.
The illustrations in Archy and Mehitabel, btw, are by George Herriman, the creator of Krazy Kat.
February 14, 2020 at 9:50 am #947087In no particular order, yesterday I read:
The Riemann Hypothesis
The Fermi Paradox
A news brief about the orbit of S62 around Sagittarius A
Extinct South American giant turtle had 10-foot-wide horned shell
Turning Left at Darwin
China coronavirus outbreak: All the latest updates
Details pour in from New Horizons’ visit to a Kuiper Belt Object
A Slight Change In Altitude Could Slash Flying’s Climate Cost
The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Eraand I worked on my 100 days project but I’m still behind
It is only on a basis of knowledge that we can become free to compose naturally. -- Bernard Dunstan
blog.jlk.netFebruary 14, 2020 at 10:59 am #947062The turtle is cool.
February 15, 2020 at 1:11 am #947079Two words– climate change.
Pinker acknowledges that it is a potentially very big problem. But he is fairly optimistic about that too.
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http://brianvds.blogspot.co.za/February 15, 2020 at 2:06 am #947093Currently I am reading three books all by the same professor plus another book about color the interaction..and my brain hurts lol
and then as a side dish.. a few tit bits about other dimensions /cause and effect or the reversal there of and space as a saddle shape and eternal and static space from the result of falsified science …
oh yes and the function of brain waves in deep transcendental meditiation ouch painfullSculpture is what you bump into when you back up to see a painting..Barnett Newman
February 15, 2020 at 10:11 am #947070I have to wonder just how much Rushdie’s Quichotte… as a work of metafiction (fiction in which the author self-consciously alludes to the artificiality or literariness of a work by parodying or departing from literary conventions and traditions… including alluding to works of prior literature) is dependent upon the prior knowledge of Cervantes’ Don Quixote. Cervantes’ book was arguably the first great Western novel… and already a work of metafiction… parodying the tradition of chivalric romances that the main character, the Don, had devoured and loved (much as the author) in a manner that sounds a lot like Rushdie’s TV addled protagonist.
Saintlukesguild-http://stlukesguild.tumblr.com/
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty—that is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know." - John Keats
"Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves that they have a better idea."- John Ciardi
February 15, 2020 at 10:15 am #947071I tend to read poetry, short fiction, and non-fiction more often than I do novels. Recently, I have been perusing the poetry of any number of old favorites:
Coleridge
Rimbaud
Baudelaire
Theophile Gautier
Eugenio Montale
Giacomo Leopardi… as well as translations of the Hebrew Bible by Robert Alter.
Saintlukesguild-http://stlukesguild.tumblr.com/
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty—that is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know." - John Keats
"Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves that they have a better idea."- John Ciardi
February 15, 2020 at 10:30 am #947085One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich: Solzhenitsyn
Website: www.artderek.com
DEMONSTRATIONS:https://www.wetcanvas.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1363787
https://www.wetcanvas.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1343600
https://www.wetcanvas.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1431363February 15, 2020 at 10:46 am #947090Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence–From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror by Judith Herman
The Age of Anxiety by Pete Townshend
yes, that Pete Townshend. His debut novel.
"Let the paint be paint" --John Marin
February 15, 2020 at 11:23 am #947063Pinker acknowledges that it is a potentially very big problem. But he is fairly optimistic about that too.
Perhaps he should change his last name to Pangloss.
February 15, 2020 at 1:28 pm #947072One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich: Solzhenitsyn
Typical Russian epic-lengthed depressing novel?
Saintlukesguild-http://stlukesguild.tumblr.com/
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty—that is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know." - John Keats
"Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves that they have a better idea."- John Ciardi
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