Poem of the Day: ‘archy confesses’

Don Marquis (1878–1937) was the “Sun Dial” columnist for the evening edition of The New York Sun when he invented the characters Archy and Mehitabel in 1916. It was as peculiar and wonderful a conceit as an American newspaper writer ever attempted, since Archy is a poetry-writing cockroach, while Mehitabel is an alley cat who claims she was Cleopatra in a previous life. And for two decades, Marquis’s columns would regularly feature communications from the cockroach.The problem Archy faced was that he could write only by throwing himself at the keys of Marquis’s typewriter at night, when the office was empty. That made it impossible for the poor cockroach to use capitalization (until, in a later poem called “CAPITALS AT LAST,” Archy discovered the shift-lock key). The limited punctuation in the notes and poems came from the exhaustion of throwing himself at the keys, as Archy tried to limit his battering.Archy, the cockroach-poet. Via Wikimedia Commons.And the voice . . . ah, yes, the sentimental tough-guy voice the cockroach used in his notes and modernist poetry. It would be tempting to trace the typing tricks to the eccentric typography of E.E. Cummings’s poetry, but Cummings’s first book, “Tulips and Chimneys” didn’t appear until 1923, long after the 1916 start for Archy in the Sun. Marquis first collected the poems in book form in the 1927 “archy and mehitabel,” illustrated by George Herriman (creator of the Krazy Kat comic strip). Two later volumes would follow — “archys life of mehitabel” (1933) and “archy does his part” (1935) — after Marquis had moved to the Tribune.Today’s Poem of the Day appeared in the Sun and was reprinted in that first book. The line breaks obscure the fact that the poem is basically rhymed tetrameter couplets in a loose dactylic trot. (Try it like this: The fish wife curse and the laugh of the horse: / Shakespeare and I are frequently coarse.) The poetic cockroach puts himself in the company of the great, as a way of justifying his common phrasings and wry comments of the social scene — in this case his interest in the lowbrow comedy of the working classes.archy confessesby Don Marquiscoarsejocositycatches the crowdshakespeareand iare oftenlow browedthe fish wifecurseand the laughof the horseshakespeareand iare frequentlycoarseaestheticexcusesin bill s behalfare adducedto refinebig bill scoarse laughbut billhe would chuckleto hear such guffhe pulledrough stuffand he likedrough stuffhoping youare the same archy___________________________________________With “Poem of the Day,” The New York Sun offers a daily portion of verse selected by Joseph Bottum with the help of the North Carolina poet Sally Thomas, the Sun’s associate poetry editor. Tied to the day, or the season, or just individual taste, the poems are drawn from the deep traditions of English verse: the great work of the past and the living poets who keep those traditions alive. The goal is always to show that poetry can still serve as a delight to the ear, an instruction to the mind, and a tonic for the soul.

Poem of the Day: ‘archy confesses’

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