[A. E. Stallings]

I suppose we could argue about whether it is poetry, but it is certainly delightful. This is one of my favorites:

pete the parrot and shakespeare

i got acquainted with
a parrot named pete recently
who is an interesting bird
pete says he used
to belong to the fellow
that ran the mermaid tavern
in london then i said
you must have known
shakespeare know him said pete
poor mutt i knew him well
he called me pete and i called him
bill but why do you say poor mutt
well said pete bill was a
disappointed man and was always
boring his friends about what
he might have been and done
if he only had a fair break
two or three pints of sack
and sherris and the tears
would trickle down into his
beard and his beard would get
soppy and wilt his collar
i remember one night when
bill and ben jonson and
frankie beaumont
were sopping it up

here i am ben says bill
nothing but a lousy playwright
and with anything like luck
in the breaks i might have been
a fairly decent sonnet writer
i might have been a poet
if i had kept away from the theatre
yes says ben i ve often
thought of that bill
but one consolation is
you are making pretty good money
out of the theatre

money money says bill what the hell
is money what i want is to be
a poet not a business man
these damned cheap shows
i turn out to keep the
theatre running break my heart
slap stick comedies and
blood and thunder tragedies
and melodramas say i wonder
if that boy heard you order
another bottle frankie
the only compensation is that i get
a chance now and then
to stick in a little poetry
when nobody is looking
but hells bells that isn t
what i want to do
i want to write sonnets and
songs and spenserian stanzas
and i might have done it too
if i hadn t got
into this frightful show game
business business business
grind grind grind
what a life for a man
that might have been a poet

well says frankie beaumont
why don t you cut it bill
i can t says bill
i need the money i ve got
a family to support down in
the country well says frankie
anyhow you write pretty good
plays bill any mutt can write
plays for this london public
says bill if he puts enough
murder in them what they want
is kings talking like kings
never had sense enough to talk
and stabbings and stranglings
and fat men making love
and clowns basting each
other with clubs and cheap puns
and off color allusions to all
the smut of the day oh i know
what the low brows want
and i give it to them

well says ben jonson
don t blubber into the drink
brace up like a man
and quit the rotten business
i can t i can t says bill
i ve been at it too long i ve got to
the place now where i can t
write anything else
but this cheap stuff
i m ashamed to look an honest
young sonneteer in the face
i live a hell of a life i do
the manager hands me some mouldy old
manuscript and says
bill here s a plot for you
this is the third of the month
by the tenth i want a good
script out of this that we
can start rehearsals on
not too big a cast
and not too much of your
damned poetry either
you know your old
familiar line of hokum
they eat up that falstaff stuff
of yours ring him in again
and give them a good ghost
or two and remember we gotta
have something dick burbage can get
his teeth into and be sure
and stick in a speech
somewhere the queen will take
for a personal compliment and if
you get in a line or two somewhere
about the honest english yeoman
it s always good stuff
and it s a pretty good stunt
bill to have the heavy villain
a moor or a dago or a jew
or something like that and say
i want another
comic welshman in this
but i don t need to tell
you bill you know this game
just some of your ordinary
hokum and maybe you could
kill a little kid or two a prince
or something they like
a little pathos along with
the dirt now you better see burbage
tonight and see what he wants
in that part oh says bill
to think i am
debasing my talents with junk
like that oh god what i wanted
was to be a poet
and write sonnet serials
like a gentleman should

well says i pete
bill s plays are highly
esteemed to this day
is that so says pete
poor mutt little he would
care what poor bill wanted
was to be a poet

archy

[Richard Wakefield]

Don Marquis, or his persona Archie the cockroach, is a long time favorite of mine. Maybe it's poetry, maybe it's merely verse, maybe it's chopped up prose, but it's always amusing and sneakily smart. I've always suspected that it is also partly a satire on what was happening in the poetry world a couple of generations ago, as if someone said, "You call that poetry? A cockroach leaping on the keys of a typewriter could write that well!" And he does.
RPW

[Clay Stockton]

Alicia, thanks for posting! I'd never read this before, and now I'd love to see more of it! Your comment about what we could argue about (if so inclined) is well-taken, too.

--CS

[eaf]

Gotta love Archy and Mehitabel. My dad introduced me to them when I was a kid.

This off a website:

Archy on Don Marquis: In Marquis' third collection of stories, "archy does his part," Archy describes his boss' worktable -- an untidy desk littered with scraps of food and poetry. Marquis, after all, valued his poetry far above his more-mundane output. His publisher, Doubleday & Doran, printed several editions of Marquis' serious poetry, but they never sold nearly as well as his stories about Archy and Mehitabel or about the Old Soak, another comic character who gained wide acclaim. Read the author s desk.

Shakespeare revisited: Several years ago I received a blunt e-mail nessage from a reader who asked incredulously why "pete the parrot and shakespeare" was not among the Archy poems on my Web site. It clearly was Marquis' greatest poem, he wrote, and my site was pitiable without it. He was right, of course; Marquis' tongue-in-cheek tale of a sad, workaday playwright is funny -- and revealing. Marquis was writing about Shakespeare but talking about himself.

-eaf

[Janet Kenny]

Alicia
I don't know what poetry is but I know what I like.

Surely no living human can fail to love these poem-things?

Janet

[Susan McLean]

My mom recommended these poems to me when I was just a kid--too young, in fact, to really get them, except in a very limited way. What amazes me now is that they were the only poems not written for children that she ever recommended to me. So I am assuming that they had a broad appeal, even for people who did not normally read poetry.

Susan

[Robert J. Clawson]

I love the pieces. I often recommend the work of Michael Casey, the "Vietnam" poet who sounds like Marquis or Runyon...but retains a unique voice. If one were to teach a class on "voice," Marquis would be requisite.

Bob

[Katy Evans-Bush]

I too used to read these when I was little, and I've never been without a copy of either Archy & Mehitabel or Archy's Life of Mehitabel. Like so many other wonderful things (including Gentlemen Prefer Blondes) they started out as newspaper columns. I love to think of the newspaper readers of the 20's reading these! How delightful that must have been.

I once had a cat called Mehitabel. She was a stray of course, but died having kittens because she had chronic cat flu, poor thing; her last surviving kitten, Ink, is now nearly 15.

[grasshopper]

I've always loved Archy and Mehitabel. Here's an excerpt from 'the song of archy and mehitabel':

'my 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 gai

the 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 gai

boss sometimes i think
that our friend mehitabel
is a trifle too gay'

I use one of Archy's maxims as a signature on some boards:
'An idea isn't responsible for the people who believe in it.'

By the way, Archy had a good excuse for his lack of punctuation, as he had to bang out his poems on a typewriter with his head, poor dab.

Regards, Maz

[Katy Evans-Bush]

Maz, and he also had to leap from key to key! If only we got so much keep-fit while creating.

KEB