Generations of readers have delighted in the work of the great American humorist Don Marquis, who was frequently compared to Mark Twain. These free-verse poems, which first appeared in Marquis's New York newspaper columns, revolve around the escapades of Archy, the philosophical cockroach who was once a poet, and Mehitabel, a streetwise alley cat who was once Cleopatra. Reincarnated as the lowest creatures on the social scale, they prowl the rowdy streets of New York City in between the world wars. The antics of these two immortal characters are now made available for the first time in their original order of publication in this unique, comprehensive collection, which features many poems never before reprinted.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
The Annotated Archy and Mehitabel
1916
Expression Is the Need
Just Cockroaches
Something to Say
Simplified Spelling
Hell
Freddy Is No More
Up or Down the Scale
Raise in Salary
An Easy Mark
Grind Down the Laboring Man
Just for This, You Go in Agate, Archy
Desk All Cleaned Up
Capitals
Why Not Commit Suicide
Writing All By Itself
We Rushed Forward and Swatted
My Naked Soul
On My Recent Demise
Ballade of the Under Side
Aeroplane
Back to the Starting Point
Lightning Bug
The Next Line
Be Beautiful
Cleopatra
The Queens I Have Been
Unpunctuated Gink
Butting These Keys with My Head
Drunken Hornet
Cheer Up Cheer Up
White Powder
My Ultimatum
Swiss Cheese
Katydid
Suicide Club, Part 1
Suicide Club, Part 2
Suicide Club, Part 3
Suicide Club, Part 4
Suicide Club, Part 5
Killing Off the Sparrows
My Last Name
Where Is Archy?
Arrest That Statue
Happy Inspirations
1917
That Cockroach Glide
Archy Gets His Statue Made
Statue of Myself
Going to War of Just Going to Hell
More or Less Neutral
Between Him and His Masterpiece
War Times
Agate for You, Archy, Just to Curb Your Pride
The Story of Mehitabel the Cat
A Pampered Kitten
Mehitabel the Cat Has Struck
It Was Beer
A Saucer Full of Beer
The Cat Is Sore at Me
Comma Boss Comma
Lawn
Workman Spare That Bathtub
Washington D C
Archy in Washington
To Help Win the War
Out of the Cockroach Body
A German Periscope
Patience Worth
Beware the Demon Rum
Sounds Like a Jolly Gang
Interest in Science
He Cried into His Beer
Prudence
Too Romantic to Work
I Knew a Ghost
That Ghost That Loafs
Superior
Sad Looking Ghost
Bore His Way Out
1918
Literary Slave No Longer
Poetry Is
Window Box War Gardens
The Crippled Cockroach
We Suspect Archy
Cockroachism
Named after the Washington Arch
Aeroplane Mail
Assisting at a Suicide
Not a Fish
At the Zoo
Prohibition Rushes Toward Us
Income Tax Slacker
The Raiding Habit
A Loyal Allied Cootie
Dialogue among the Plants
Ye Instead of The
One Thing That Makes Crickets So Melancholy
Sphinx
Reports of My Exit
Glorious Footfulness
Falling Upwards
Headgear
Smile When You Ride on the Subway
A Genuine Quip
Tobacco Fund
The Advice of Your Little Friend
Jane Gad Fly
The Influenza
A Tall Story
Chief Janitor
I Saw Archy
Peace Conference
More and More at Sea
Poet Overboard
Freedom of the Seas
Two Old Men
Passing the Bock
The Former Kaiser
Abdication Underneath the Bough
Who Pays for All This
The Former Czar
1919
At the Tomb of Napoleon
Preliminary Peace
No Water Bug
Safer in America
An Interview with Mehitabel
No Beer No Work
Royal Blood and Anarchy
I Left There Too Soon
Classed with Fleas
A Home among the Casks
Help I Can Give the Worried Housewife
In Spite of H Dash Double L
Galoshes for Cockroaches
A Poem in the Kipling Manner
Put Me in the Movies
The Best Thing You Have Done Yet
Archy Is Still on Strike
Grin and Beer It
The Archy Strike
Call Archy Back
An Injunction
Archy Gets a 50 Per Cent Increase
Thank You for the Advice
Darned Little Justice
Archy Gets Restless Again
A Plum Plan
Trying to Ruin Me
To Settle the Controversy
Rheumatism
This Monster Man
The Cat Show
1920
Archy Is Ill
The Anti Cockroach Conspiracy
A Threat
The Shimmie
A Former Doughboy
Pretty Soft for You
A Little Waterbug
An Archy Drive
Sentimental about Birds
A Sad Time Dieting
Crazy as a Bed Bug
Random Thoughts by Archy
I Saw a Football Game
1921
No Privacy
This Lenin Person
Organizing the Insects
The Cockroach Its Life History
My Private Comet
Dodo Birds and Cubist Posters
To Become Grasshoppers
Ku Klux Klam
O City of Angels
Archy Turns Highbrow for a Minute
Krew Krux Kranks
Cursed Fly Swatters
1922
The Cheerful Oyster
Talking to a Moth
Ground for Optimism
Waiting for a Vacant Body
Interviewed the Mummy
Archy to the Radio Fans
Once Every Seventeen Years
The Truth about the Insects
Warty Bliggens
Strange Bedfellows
My Favorite Poem
Always the Lady
Archy's Own Short Course in Entomology
The Patagonian Penguin
Be Glad You're Not a Tomcat
The Most Luckless Creature
Low Brow
Song of Mehitabel
Forgets His Littleness
Business Matters
Fairies
I Knuckle Under
The Dactyl Droops
Investigating Her Morals
Small Talk
Shakespeare and I
Thank You for the Mittens
Archy Is Excited
The Futility of Literature
Notes
Acknowledgments
Generations of readers have delighted in the work of the great American humorist Don Marquis, who was frequently compared to Mark Twain. These free-verse poems, which first appeared in Marquis's New York newspaper columns, revolve around the escapades of Archy, the philosophical cockroach who was once a poet, and Mehitabel, a streetwise alley cat who was once Cleopatra. Reincarnated as the lowest creatures on the social scale, they prowl the rowdy streets of New York City in between the world wars. The antics of these two immortal characters are now made available for the first time in their original order of publication in this unique, comprehensive collection, which features many poems never before reprinted.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
The Annotated Archy and Mehitabel
1916
Expression Is the Need
Just Cockroaches
Something to Say
Simplified Spelling
Hell
Freddy Is No More
Up or Down the Scale
Raise in Salary
An Easy Mark
Grind Down the Laboring Man
Just for This, You Go in Agate, Archy
Desk All Cleaned Up
Capitals
Why Not Commit Suicide
Writing All By Itself
We Rushed Forward and Swatted
My Naked Soul
On My Recent Demise
Ballade of the Under Side
Aeroplane
Back to the Starting Point
Lightning Bug
The Next Line
Be Beautiful
Cleopatra
The Queens I Have Been
Unpunctuated Gink
Butting These Keys with My Head
Drunken Hornet
Cheer Up Cheer Up
White Powder
My Ultimatum
Swiss Cheese
Katydid
Suicide Club, Part 1
Suicide Club, Part 2
Suicide Club, Part 3
Suicide Club, Part 4
Suicide Club, Part 5
Killing Off the Sparrows
My Last Name
Where Is Archy?
Arrest That Statue
Happy Inspirations
1917
That Cockroach Glide
Archy Gets His Statue Made
Statue of Myself
Going to War of Just Going to Hell
More or Less Neutral
Between Him and His Masterpiece
War Times
Agate for You, Archy, Just to Curb Your Pride
The Story of Mehitabel the Cat
A Pampered Kitten
Mehitabel the Cat Has Struck
It Was Beer
A Saucer Full of Beer
The Cat Is Sore at Me
Comma Boss Comma
Lawn
Workman Spare That Bathtub
Washington D C
Archy in Washington
To Help Win the War
Out of the Cockroach Body
A German Periscope
Patience Worth
Beware the Demon Rum
Sounds Like a Jolly Gang
Interest in Science
He Cried into His Beer
Prudence
Too Romantic to Work
I Knew a Ghost
That Ghost That Loafs
Superior
Sad Looking Ghost
Bore His Way Out
1918
Literary Slave No Longer
Poetry Is
Window Box War Gardens
The Crippled Cockroach
We Suspect Archy
Cockroachism
Named after the Washington Arch
Aeroplane Mail
Assisting at a Suicide
Not a Fish
At the Zoo
Prohibition Rushes Toward Us
Income Tax Slacker
The Raiding Habit
A Loyal Allied Cootie
Dialogue among the Plants
Ye Instead of The
One Thing That Makes Crickets So Melancholy
Sphinx
Reports of My Exit
Glorious Footfulness
Falling Upwards
Headgear
Smile When You Ride on the Subway
A Genuine Quip
Tobacco Fund
The Advice of Your Little Friend
Jane Gad Fly
The Influenza
A Tall Story
Chief Janitor
I Saw Archy
Peace Conference
More and More at Sea
Poet Overboard
Freedom of the Seas
Two Old Men
Passing the Bock
The Former Kaiser
Abdication Underneath the Bough
Who Pays for All This
The Former Czar
1919
At the Tomb of Napoleon
Preliminary Peace
No Water Bug
Safer in America
An Interview with Mehitabel
No Beer No Work
Royal Blood and Anarchy
I Left There Too Soon
Classed with Fleas
A Home among the Casks
Help I Can Give the Worried Housewife
In Spite of H Dash Double L
Galoshes for Cockroaches
A Poem in the Kipling Manner
Put Me in the Movies
The Best Thing You Have Done Yet
Archy Is Still on Strike
Grin and Beer It
The Archy Strike
Call Archy Back
An Injunction
Archy Gets a 50 Per Cent Increase
Thank You for the Advice
Darned Little Justice
Archy Gets Restless Again
A Plum Plan
Trying to Ruin Me
To Settle the Controversy
Rheumatism
This Monster Man
The Cat Show
1920
Archy Is Ill
The Anti Cockroach Conspiracy
A Threat
The Shimmie
A Former Doughboy
Pretty Soft for You
A Little Waterbug
An Archy Drive
Sentimental about Birds
A Sad Time Dieting
Crazy as a Bed Bug
Random Thoughts by Archy
I Saw a Football Game
1921
No Privacy
This Lenin Person
Organizing the Insects
The Cockroach Its Life History
My Private Comet
Dodo Birds and Cubist Posters
To Become Grasshoppers
Ku Klux Klam
O City of Angels
Archy Turns Highbrow for a Minute
Krew Krux Kranks
Cursed Fly Swatters
1922
The Cheerful Oyster
Talking to a Moth
Ground for Optimism
Waiting for a Vacant Body
Interviewed the Mummy
Archy to the Radio Fans
Once Every Seventeen Years
The Truth about the Insects
Warty Bliggens
Strange Bedfellows
My Favorite Poem
Always the Lady
Archy's Own Short Course in Entomology
The Patagonian Penguin
Be Glad You're Not a Tomcat
The Most Luckless Creature
Low Brow
Song of Mehitabel
Forgets His Littleness
Business Matters
Fairies
I Knuckle Under
The Dactyl Droops
Investigating Her Morals
Small Talk
Shakespeare and I
Thank You for the Mittens
Archy Is Excited
The Futility of Literature
Notes
Acknowledgments
