warty bliggens the toad -- Don Marquis

Guest poem submitted by Martin Davis:

(Poem #1723) warty bliggens the toad i met a toad the other day by the name of warty bliggens he was sitting under a toadstool feeling contented he explained that when the cosmos was created that toadstool was especially planned for his personal shelter from sun and rain thought out and prepared for him do not tell me said warty bliggens that there is not a purpose in the universe the thought is blasphemy a little more conversation revealed that warty bliggens considers himself to be the centre of the said universe the earth exists to grow toadstools for him to sit under the sun to give him light by day and the moon and wheeling constellations to make beautiful the night for the sake of warty bliggens to what act of yours do you impute this interest on the part of the creator of the universe i asked him why is it that you are so greatly favoured ask rather said warty bliggens what the universe has done to deserve me if i were a human being i would not laugh too complacently at poor warty bliggens for similar absurdities have only too often lodged in the crinkles of the human cerebrum archy -- Don Marquis

        From "archy and mehitabel", 1927.

I really enjoyed Saturday's grook.  It's great when something makes you
laugh out loud.  It put me immediately in mind of 'warty bliggens the toad'
by Don Marquis, which isn't on the Minstrels site yet, so I reproduce it
here in case Piet Hein triggers a rush of similar thoughts.

Back in the mists of time (the 70s) when I used to teach 11 year olds, we
always used to have fun with this poem.  It's like the tale of the Sunday
School teacher who is telling her group the parable Christ told of the
Pharisee and the tax collector (Luke 18: 9-14).

 'Two men went up into the temple to pray; one was a Pharisee, and the other
was a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and prayed to himself like this:
"God, I thank you, that I am not like the rest of men, extortioners,
unrighteous, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a
week. I give tithes of all that I get." But the tax collector, standing far
away, wouldn't even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying,
"God, be merciful to me, a sinner!" I tell you, this man went down to his
house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will
be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.'

And then the teacher says to the children, "Now then, boys and girls, put
your hands together and let's all thank God that we're not like that smug
Pharisee!"

Cheers,
Martin Davis.

aesop revised by archy -- Don Marquis

Guest poem submitted by Sean Dwyer, who writes the
following prologue:

  I have a Don Maquis archy poem here that should be required reading.
It's a revision of an Aesop fable, which runs thus:

  _The Lamb and the Wolf_

  A Wolf pursued a Lamb, which fled for refuge to a certain Temple. The
Wolf called out to him and said, "The Priest will slay you in sacrifice,
if he should catch you."  On which the Lamb replied, "It would be better
for me to be sacrificed in the Temple than to be eaten by you."

and I'll attach the poem here:

(Poem #1458) aesop revised by archy a wolf met a spring lamb drinking at a stream and said to her you are the lamb that muddied this stream all last year so that i could not get a clean fresh drink i am resolved that this outrage shall not be enacted again this season i am going to kill you just a minute said the lamb i was not born last year so it could not have been i the wolf then pulled a number of other arguments as to why the lamb should die but in each case the lamb pretty innocent that she was easily proved herself guiltless well well said the wolf enough of that argument you are right and i am wrong but i am going to eat you anyhow because i am hungry stop exclamation point cried a human voice and a man came over the slope of the ravine vile lupine marauder you shall not kill that beautiful and innocent lamb for i shall save her exit the wolf left upper exit snarling poor little lamb continued our human hero sweet tender little thing it is well that i appeared just when i did it makes my blood boil to think of the fright to which you have been subjected in another moment i would have been too late come home with me and the lamb frolicked about her new found friend gambolling as to the sound of a wordsworthian tabor [1] and leaping for joy as if propelled by a stanza from william blake these vile and bloody wolves went on our hero in honest indignation they must be cleared out of the country the meads must be made safe for sheepocracy and so jollying her along with the usual human hokum [2] he led her to his home and the son of a gun did not even blush when they passed the mint bed gently he cut her throat all the while inveigling against the inhuman wolf and tenderly he cooked her and lovingly he sauced her and meltingly he ate her and piously he said a grace thanking his gods for their bountiful gifts to him and after dinner he sat with his pipe before the fire meditating on the brutality of wolves and the injustice of the universe which allows them to harry poor innocent lambs and wondering if he had not better write to the paper for as he said for god s sake can t something be done about it -- Don Marquis

[1] tabor: a small hand-held drum common in Elizabethan times
[2] hokum: nonsense, meaningless drivel

For archy, this is a LONG poem, he must have been feeling either
extremely energetic, or found some great food. One of the pleasures of
the poem is the narration which pops up here and there as stage
directions or commentary. It is a hilarious upturning of myth and the
what-if the fable implies. It's also decent blank verse [I think you
mean 'free verse'; 'blank verse' is unrhymed iambic pentameter a la
Shakespeare and co. - Martin] , and archy's work often reminds me of e.
e. cummings, not for the obvious typographical reasons, but its terse
simplicity.

Sean Dwyer.

[thomas adds]

Here archy seems to be conflating several distinct fables, the one
featured in Sean's prologue above, and one or both of the following:

  A Wolf, meeting with a Lamb astray from the fold, resolved not to lay
violent hands on him, but to find some plea to justify to the Lamb the
Wolf's right to eat him.  He thus addressed him: "Sirrah, last year you
grossly insulted me."  "Indeed," bleated the Lamb in a mournful tone of
voice, "I was not then born."  Then said the Wolf, "You feed in my
pasture."  "No, good sir," replied the Lamb, "I have not yet tasted
grass."  Again said the Wolf, "You drink of my well."  "No," exclaimed
the Lamb, "I never yet drank water, for as yet my mother's milk is both
food and drink to me."  Upon which the Wolf seized him and ate him up,
saying, "Well! I won't remain supperless, even though you refute every
one of my imputations."  The tyrant will always find a pretext for his
tyranny.

  Once upon a time a Wolf was lapping at a spring on a hillside, when,
looking up, what should he see but a Lamb just beginning to drink a
little lower down.  "There's my supper," thought he, "if only I can find
some excuse to seize it."  Then he called out to the Lamb, "How dare you
muddle the water from which I am drinking?" "Nay, master, nay," said
Lambikin; "if the water be muddy up there, I  cannot be the cause of it,
for it runs down from you to me." "Well, then," said the Wolf, "why did
you call me bad names this time last year?" "That cannot be," said the
Lamb; "I am only six months old." "I don't care," snarled the Wolf; "if
it was not you it was your father;" and with that he rushed upon the
poor little Lamb and ate her all up.  But before she died she gasped out
"Any excuse will serve a tyrant."

        -- both from http://www.pacificnet.net/~johnr/aesop/

The "wordsworthian tabor" is probably this one:

    Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,
    And while the young lambs bound
        As to the tabor's sound,

        -- William Wordsworth
        "Intimations of Immortality"
        full text at http://www.bartleby.com/106/287.html

while the "stanza from william blake" is likely to be one of two from
the poem "The Lamb", which I should have mentioned in yesterday's
Minstrels links section: Poem #1405.

Talking of yesterday's poem, thanks to Michael, Faith and Carolyn, all
of whom wrote in with biographical information about John Dressel; said
info can be found on the Minstrels website under Poem #1457.

thomas.

mehitabel and her kittens -- Don Marquis

Guest poem sent in by Suresh Ramasubramanian

(Poem #1079) mehitabel and her kittens well boss mehitabel the cat has reappeared in her old haunts with a flock of kittens three of them this time archy she says to me yesterday the life of a female artist is continually hampered what in hell have i done to deserve all these kittens i look back on my life and it seems to me to be just one damned kitten after another i am a dancer archy and my only prayer is to be allowed to give my best to my art but just as i feel that i am succeeding in my life work along comes another batch of these damned kittens it is not archy that i am shy on mother love god knows i care for the sweet little things curse them but am i never to be allowed to live my own life i have purposely avoided matrimony in the interests of the higher life but i might just as well have been a domestic slave for all the freedom i have gained i hope none of them gets run over by an automobile my heart would bleed if anything happened to them and i found it out but it isn t fair archy it isn t fair these damned tom cats have all the fun and freedom if i was like some of these green eyed feline vamps i know i would simply walk out on the bunch of them and let them shift for themselves but i am not that kind archy i am full of mother love my kindness has always been my curse a tender heart is the cross i bear self sacrifice always and forever is my motto damn them i will make a home for the sweet innocent little things unless of course providence in his wisdom should remove them they are living just now in an abandoned garbage can just behind a made over stable in greenwich village and if it rained into the can before i could get back and rescue them i am afraid the little dears might drown it makes me shudder just to think of it of course if i were a family cat they would probably be drowned anyhow sometimes i think the kinder thing would be for me to carry the sweet little things over to the river and drop them in myself but a mother s love archy is so unreasonable something always prevents me these terrible conflicts are always presenting themselves to the artist the eternal struggle between art and life archy is something fierce my what a dramatic life i have lived one moment up the next moment down again but always gay archy always gay and always the lady too in spite of hell well boss it will be interesting to note just how mehitabel works out her present problem a dark mystery still broods over the manner in which the former family of three kittens disappeared one day she was taking to me of the kittens and the next day when i asked her about them she said innocently what kittens interrogation point and that was all i could ever get out of her on the subject we had a heavy rain right after she spoke to me but probably that garbage can leaks so the kittens have not yet been drowned archy -- Don Marquis

well, we haven't had an archy poem since at least a couple of years, i
think.  the last one was on oct 9, 1999, from a cursory look at the
minstrels archives.  i hereby propose to remedy this.

motherhood and career - as seen through the eyes of a cat on her ninth
life whose soul once belonged to cleopatra.

        -srs (all lowercase mail for an all lowercase poem)

[Martin adds]

Suresh is right - we have indeed not had one of these in a while, and I do
thank him for remedying that. One of the things that I like about the Archy
and Mehitabel poems is that they work not just as poems, but as continuing
episodes in a narrative that is enthralling in its own right; Archy and
Mehitabel are characters that we come to care about, and in whose
development we can take an interest quite orthogonal to the (considerable)
poetic merits of the individual pieces. Today's poem is a genuinely moving
glimpse into Mehitabel's moral dilemma, and the ending is as artistically
satisfying as it is disturbing.

pity the poor spiders -- Don Marquis

We've not had one of these in a while...

(Poem #230) pity the poor spiders i have just been reading an advertisement of a certain roach exterminator the human race little knows all the sadness it causes in the insect world i remember some weeks ago meeting a middle aged spider she was weeping what is the trouble i asked her it is these cursed fly swatters she replied they kill of all the flies and my family and i are starving to death it struck me as so pathetic that i made a little song about it as follows to wit twas an elderly mother spider grown gaunt and fierce and gray with her little ones crouched beside her who wept as she sang this lay curses on these here swatters what kills off all the flies for me and my little daughters unless we eats we dies swattin and swattin and swattin tis little else you hear and we ll soon be dead and forgotten with the cost of living so dear my husband he up and left me lured off by a centipede and he says as he bereft me tis wrong but i ll get a feed and me a working and working scouring the streets for food faithful and never shirking doing the best i could curses on these here swatters what kills off all the flies me and my poor little daughters unless we eats we dies only a withered spider feeble and worn and old and this is what you do when you swat you swatters cruel and cold i will admit that some of the insects do not lead noble lives but is every man s hand to be against them yours for less justice and more charity archy -- Don Marquis

  with a charming accompanying illustration at
  [broken link] http://www.sfo.com/~batt/archy/poem4.html

Marquis is a poet of whom I never tire - his Archy and Mehitabel poems, in
particular, are some of the most delightful pieces of poetry I have
encountered. As usual, I recommend going through the previous Archy poems in
the archive first, or at least the first one, for context.

Today's poem adds an extra twist - Archy is moved to break into song, with
results that are nothing short of hilarious. I laughed out loud several
times at the sheer audacity of the verse, and the deadly accuracy with which
he pinpoints the tone of voice.

The other striking thing about the poem is how smoothly and naturally
Marquis has introduced a second 'voice' for Archy; we, the readers, have no
problem believing that the (fictional) author of the song and the monologues
are one and the same, and that it is Archy writing in the voice of the
spider rather than Marquis doing so. And Marquis not only carries it off, he
does so with consummate ease.

m.

Links:

Go the the archive at <[broken link] http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstre;s> and sort on
Poet name; there have been several of Marquis' poems run in the past.

In particular, see poem #36 for background info and context.

certain maxims of archy -- Don Marquis

(Poem #122) certain maxims of archy many a man spanks his children for things his own father should have spanked out of him i once heard the survivors of a colony of ants that had been partially obliterated by a cow s foot seriously debating the intention of the gods towards their civilization if you get gloomy just take an hour off and sit and think how much better this world is than hell of course it won t cheer you up much if you expect to go there that stern and rockbound coast felt like an amateur when it saw how grim the puritans that landed on it were insects have their own point of view about civilization a man thinks he amounts to a great deal but to a flea or a mosquito a human being is merely something good to eat just as soon as the uplifters get a country reformed it slips into a nose dive if monkey glands did restore your youth what would you do with it question mark just what you did before interrogation point every cloud has its silver lining but it is sometimes a little difficult to get it to the mint prohibition makes you want to cry into your beer and denies you the beer to cry into the honey bee is sad and cross and wicked as a weasel and when she perches on you boss she leaves a little measle i do not see why men should be so proud insects have the more ancient lineage according to the scientists insects were insects when man was only a burbling whatisit lots of people can make their own whisky but can t drink it i heard a couple of fleas talking the other day says one come to lunch with me i can lead you to a pedigreed dog says the other one i do not care what a dog s pedigree may be safety first is my motto what i want to know is whether he has got a muzzle on millionaires and bums taste about alike to me boss the other day i heard an ant conversing with a flea small talk i said disgustedly and went away from there an optimist is a guy that has never had much experience the servant problem wouldn t hurt the u s a if it could settle its public servant problem there is always something to be thankful for you would not think that a cockroach had much ground for optimism but as the fishing season opens up i grow more and more cheerful at the thought that nobody ever got the notion of using cockroaches for bait -- Don Marquis

If you came in late, do look up the previous two 'archy and mehitabel'
poems, poem #36 and poem #76, before returning to this one.

Today's poem is somewhat different in style - it's a series of disconnected
verses, so it lacks some of the helter-skelter streaming effect. The maxims
do share the other characteristics of Marquis's work, though, being both
witty and thought-provoking (and ofttimes just plain funny). I also like the
way he hasn't descended into a series of thinly veiled platitudes - I
usually find the archy and mehitabel poems refreshing, and todays is no
exception.

m.

archy interviews a pharoh -- Don Marquis

(Poem #76) archy interviews a pharoh boss i went and interviewed the mummy of the egyptian pharoh in the metropolitan museum as you bade me to do what ho my regal leatherface says i greetings little scatter footed scarab says he kingly has been says i what was your ambition when you had any insignificant and journalistic insect says the royal crackling in my tender prime i was too dignified to have anything as vulgar as ambition the ra ra boys in the seti set were too haughty to be ambitious we used to spend our time feeding the ibises and ordering pyramids sent home to try on but if i had my life to live over again i would give dignity the regal razz and hire myself out to work in a brewery old tan and tarry says i i detect in your speech the overtones of melancholy yes i am sad says the majestic mackerel i am as sad as the song of a soudanese jackal who is wailing for the blood red moon he cannot reach and rip on what are you brooding with such a wistful wishfulness there in the silences confide in me my perial pretzel says i i brood on beer my scampering whiffle snoot on beer says he my sympathies are with your royal dryness says i my little pest says he you must be respectful in the presence of a mighty desolation little archy forty centuries of thirst look down upon you oh by isis and by osiris says the princely raisin and by pish and phthush and phthah by the sacred book perembru and all the gods that rule from the upper cataract of the nile to the delta of the duodenum i am dry i am as dry as the next morning mouth of a dissipated desert as dry as the hoofs of the camels of timbuctoo little fussy face i am as dry as the heart of a sand storm at high noon in hell i have been lying here and there for four thousand years with silicon in my esophagus as gravel in my gizzard thinking thinking thinking of beer divine drouth says i imperial fritter continue to think there is no law against that in this country old salt codfish if you keep quiet about it not yet what country is this asks the poor prune my reverend juicelessness this is a beerless country says i well well said the royal desiccation my political opponents back home always maintained that i would wind up in hell and it seems they had the right dope and with these hopeless words the unfortunate residuum gave a great cough of despair and turned to dust and debris right in my face it being the only time i ever actually saw anybody put the cough into sarcophagus dear boss as i scurry about i hear of a great many tragedies in our midsts personally i yearn for some dear friend to pass over and leave to me a boot legacy yours for the second coming of gambrinus archy -- Don Marquis

I felt it was time for another of these <g>. This one is a lot funnier than
'the lesson of the moth', especially the string of epithets traded back and
forth.  There's a nice accompanying cartoon at
<[broken link] http://www.sfo.com/~batt/archy/poem6.html>

Nothing really to say about this poem - if you missed the earlier one, with
a more detailed commentary on Archy and Mehitabel, look it up at poem #36

References:

seti set: The Seti dynasty ruled Egypt around 1300-1200 BC
the sacred book perembru: seems to be a piece of nonsense, carrying on from
      'pish and phthush...' since I couldn't find any other reference to it
gambrinus: the only reference I could find was an online database of beer
      recipes; I assume the name has something to do with beer, but I
      couldn't trace it.

Don Marquis died in 1937, so I assume the poem was written during the
Prohibition era.

m.

the lesson of the moth -- Don Marquis

Background info: The narrator is a poet reincarnated in a cockroach's body.
He types by jumping on the keys of a typewriter, hence the lack of caps.
Knowing that helps :)

(Poem #36) the lesson of the moth i was talking to a moth the other evening he was trying to break into an electric light bulb and fry himself on the wires why do you fellows pull this stunt i asked him because it is the conventional thing for moths or why if that had been an uncovered candle instead of an electric light bulb you would now be a small unsightly cinder have you no sense plenty of it he answered but at times we get tired of using it we get bored with the routine and crave beauty and excitement fire is beautiful and we know that if we get too close it will kill us but what does that matter it is better to be happy for a moment and be burned up with beauty than to live a long time and be bored all the while so we wad all our life up into one little roll and then we shoot the roll that is what life is for it is better to be a part of beauty for one instant and then cease to exist than to exist forever and never be a part of beauty our attitude toward life is come easy go easy we are like human beings used to be before they became too civilized to enjoy themselves and before i could argue him out of his philosophy he went and immolated himself on a patent cigar lighter i do not agree with him myself i would rather have half the happiness and twice the longevity but at the same time i wish there was something i wanted as badly as he wanted to fry himself archy -- Don Marquis

I don't usually care overmuch for free verse; Don Marquis is a rare but
welcome exception. His poems are delightful, refreshing and filled with the
kind of insight one usually associates with humorists like Twain. The one
above is my favourite; while not as witty as some of the others, it makes me
shiver, which is about as good a subjective test of poetry as any I can come
up with :) It is interesting, incidentally to compare the sentiments
expressed with those in If.

Background:

  They are the most unlikely of friends. Archy is a cockroach with the soul
  of a poet, and Mehitabel is an alley cat who traces her lineage back to
  Cleopatra. Not to a cat in Cleopatra's time, mind you, but Cleopatra
  herself. Together, cockroach and cat form the foundation of one of the
  most engaging collections of light poetry to come out of the early
  twentieth century.
  [...]
  The drawings that accompany some of these poems are by the brilliant
  cartoonist George Herriman, creator of the Krazy Kat comic strip. You'll
  find them in just about all of the Archy and Mehitabel books.

    -- the archy and mehitabel page,
    <[broken link] http://www.sfo.com/~batt/archy/index.html>

  We came into our room earlier than usual in the morning, and discovered a
  gigantic cockroach jumping about on the keys. He did not see us, and we
  watched him. He would climb painfully upon the framework of the machine and
  cast himself with all his force upon a key, head downward, and his weight
  and the impact of the blow were just sufficient to operate the machine, one
  slow letter after another. He could not work the capital letters, and he had
  a great deal of difficulty operating the mechanism that shifts the paper so
  that a fresh line may be started. We never saw a cockroach work so hard or
  perspire so freely in all our lives before. After about an hour of this
  frightfully difficult literary labor he fell to the floor exhausted, and we
  saw him creep feebly into a nest of the poems which are always there in
  profusion.

  Congratulating ourself that we had left a sheet of paper in the machine the
  night before so that all this work had not been in vain, we made an
  examination, and this is what we found:

    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
    ...
    (rest of poem snipped)

    -- Don Marquis, 'the coming of archy'

  mehitabel s soul formerly inhabited a
  human also at least that
  is what mehitabel is claiming these
  days it may be she got jealous of
  my prestige anyhow she and
  i have been talking it over in a
  friendly way who were you
  mehitabel i asked her i was
  cleopatra once she said well i said i
  suppose you lived in a palace you bet
  she said and what lovely fish dinners
  we used to have and licked her chops

    -- Marquis, from 'mehitabel was once cleopatra'

Biographical Notes:

  Who was Don Marquis and who cares?

  Donald Robert Perry Marquis 1878-1937, was a newspaper columnist,
  humorist, poet, playwright and author of about 35 books of which the best
  known are books of humorous poetry about Archy the cockroach and Mehitabel
  the cat. Don's work appeared regularly in the New York Sun and the
  Saturday Evening Post, among other places.

  Don still had enough fans in 1978 that several dozen people assembled in
  Port Townsend, Washington, to celebrate his 100th birthday. Among the
  celebrants were Frank Herbert, author of the Dune trilogy; William
  McCollum, Jr., editor of The Don Marquis Letters (Northwoods Press) and
  the now-defunct Don Marquis Newsletter; Bob Lyon of The Non-Profit Press
  who published Don's play Everything's Jake in honor of the occasion; and
  Jim Ennes, author of Assault on the Liberty (Random House). The group
  shared cocktails, dinner, conversation, speeches, stories about Don, and
  Baked Beans Ambrosia prepared exactly as Don says beans should be prepared
  in The Almost Perfect State.

        -- The Don Marquis page at <[broken link] http://www.halcyon.com/jim/donmarquis/>

Criticism:

  "Archy and his racy pal Mehitabel are timeless," noted E. B. White in his
  essay on Don Marquis and his famous creations, and the undimmed enthusiasm
  of several generations of fans --who every year buy thousands of copies of
  Marquis' earlier collections--testifies to their appeal. A whimsical and
  sophisticated sage, archy the cockroach entertained readers with
  iconoclastic observations on pretensions, politics, and our place in the
  cosmos during Marquis' career as a New York newspaper columnist in the 1920s
  and 30s.

    -- From reviews of 'archyology', a posthumous collection
    <[broken link] http://www.dartmouth.edu/acad-inst/upne/s961.html>

Martin