The musical is an interesting case in point. None of these achieved any sort of success. Herriman added illustrations to some of the poems.*** There have been various editions of the collections through the years, and even attempts at plays and musicals. Marquis ran them every few days in his column and in 1927, selected ones were put into a collection, Archy and Mehitabel. Marquis wrote in a very direct style that isn’t dated at all. Of course, most of the poems are free verse and all of them are a delightful mix of philosophy and entertainment. He would sometimes talk about Mehitabel the cat, who thought herself the reincarnation of Queen Cleopatra** and whose motto was “toujours gai.” Marquis would let his imagination run wild.Īrchy was a hit. Some where philosophical others humorous, and others charmingly absurd. Archy wrote (in all lower case and without punctuation) on whatever seized his fancy. Back then, columnists weren’t strictly political their job was to fill the column with entertaining observations and comments One day, in a fit of whimsy, he wrote a bit of a poemīut i died and my soul went into a body of a cockroachĪccording Marquis, he had left a sheet of paper in his typewriter before leaving for the day and Archy* the cockroach, who climbed on the typewriter and banged his head onto the keys to painstakingly write out the letter.Īnd thus a bard was born. Marquis was a newspaperman and columnist for the New York Sun. Last week, I wrote about the great George Herriman and Krazy Kat and as I looked over his career, I was reminded of one of his side projects, something that equaled his inventiveness and love of words: Don Marquis’s Archy and Mehitabel.
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