Don Marquis's Artistic Creed

Hi, Everyone.

Here it is, the poem I promised you yesterday. It’s light, but legitimate. And it’s a major part of my own artistic creed.


archy confesses
by Don Marquis

coarse
jocosity
catches the crowd
shakespeare
and I
are often
low browed

the fish wife
curse
and the laugh
of the horse
shakespeare
and I
are frequently
coarse

aesthetic
excuses
in bill s behalf
are adduced
to refine
big bill s
coarse laugh

but bill
he would chuckle
to hear such guff
he pulled
rough stuff
and he liked
rough stuff

hoping you
are the same
archy


And this time, mirabile dictu (which is Latin for “miraculous to relate”), I will let the poem stand on it own, without any exposition from me.

All best,
Michael

The Immortal archy

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Dear Everybody:

Tomorrow I’m going to give you a poem titled “archy confesses.” But some of you are so unfortunate as to be unfamiliar with Don Marquis and his brilliant creations, Archy and Mehitabel. So today I’m going to give you Archy’s first appearance, extracted from the Sun Dial column of the New York Sun.

the coming of archy
by Don Marquis

Dobbs Ferry possesses a rat which slips out of his lair at night and runs a typewriting machine in a garage. Unfortunately, he has always been interrupted by the watchman before he could produce a complete story.

It was at first thought that the power which made the typewriter run was a ghost, instead of a rat. It seems likely to us that it was both a ghost and a rat. Mme. Blavatsky's ego went into a white horse after she passed over, and someone's personality has undoubtedly gone into this rat. It is an era of belief in communications from the spirit land.

And since this matter had been reported in the public prints and seriously received we are no longer afraid of being ridiculed, and we do not mind making a statement of something that happened to our own typewriter a couple of weeks ago.

We came into our room earlier than usual in the morning and discovered a giagantic cockroach jumping about upon 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 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
thank you for the apple peelings in the wastepaper basket
but your paste is getting so stale i cant eat it
there is a cat here called mehitabel i wish you would have
removed she nearly ate me the other night why dont she
catch rats that is what she is supposed to be for
there is a rat here she should get without delay.
most of these rats here are just rats
but this rat is like me he has a human soul in him
he used to be a poet himself
night after night i have written poetry for you
on your typewriter
and this big brute of a rat who used to be a poet
comes out of his hole when it is done
and reads it and sniffs at it
he is jealous of my poetry
he used to make fun of it when we were both human
he was a punk poet himself
and after he has read it he sneers
and then he eats it
i wish you would have mehitabel kill that rat
or get a cat that is onto her job
and i will write you a series of poems showing how things look
to a cockroach
that rats name is freddy
the next time freddy dies i hope he wont be a rat
but something smaller i hope i will be a rat
in the next transmigration and freddy a cockroach
i will teach him to sneer at my poetry then
dont you ever eat any sandwiches in your office
i haven't had a crumb of bread for i dont know how long
or a piece of ham or anything but apple parings
and paste leave a piece of paper in your machine
every night you can call me archy



Is that a beautiful piece of whimsy or what? Archy, it becomes clear over the course of several collections of these columns, is Marquis’s alter ego. Marquis had the soul of a poet, too, in the body of a newspaperman, which he must have often felt was not all that many karmic levels higher than a cockroach. Of Archy, E. B. White wrote, “The details of his creative life make him a blood brother to writing men. He cast himself with all his force upon a key, head downward. So do we all. And when he was through his labors, he fell to the floor, spent. He was vain (so are we all), hungry, saw things from the under side, and was continually bringing up the matter of whether he should be paid for his work. He was bold, disrespectful, possessed of the revolutionary spirit (he organized the Worms Turnverein), was never subservient to the boss yet always trying to wheedle food out of him, always getting right to the heart of the matter. And he was contemptuous of those persons who were absorbed in the mere technical details of his writing. ‘The question is whether the stuff is literature or not.’”

It is. The Archy and Mehitabel books are in print today. Bookstore stock them in the poetry section.

Oh, and vers libre, to belabor the obvious, is “free verse.” Archy was reborn as a cockroach for the sin of writing free verse.

All best,
Michael

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Tennyson Redeemed

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Note: I was out of town and unable to access the Web Saturday, so I missed posting this then. It won't happen again.

Hi, Gang!

Two days ago, I kicked around Alfred, Lord Tennyson pretty bad for being a jingoistic tub-thumper and foister-off-on-the-public of rhymes as repetitive and annoying as a television advertising jingle. All deserved, of course.

But with the exception of the immortal McGonagal, artists should not be judged by their worst work, but by their best. So I ask you to contemplate the following poem. It’s called “a Fragment,” but so far as I’ve been able to learn, that’s all there is to the work. Tennyson just thought that a proper poem should be larger.

The Eagle
(a Fragment)
Alfred, Lord Tennyson

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.


Now is that impressive or what? That’s as beautiful a picture as was ever drawn in thirty-nine words. Note how the stillness of the first five lines converts to action and speed in the last. Note how unexpected that is. You’ve been set up. The whole thing is structured like a joke: Buildup, misdirection, punchline. The poem is as elegantly constructed as a mousetrap, and like a mousetrap it closes with a snap.

All best,
Michael

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War! Hunh! What Is It Good For?

Dear All:

Yesterday, I mentioned how a generation of young Brits went off to World War I with the noble words of Horace ringing in their ears: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. You have no idea how upbeat those guys were. They went in thinking it would be fun.

That belief didn’t last long.

Wilfred Owen expressed the bitterness many felt, their belief that they had been lied to and betrayed, in the following poem:


Dulce Et Decorum Est
by Wilfred Owen

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.



Wow! What a malcontent! This guy just was not a team player. And yet many people consider him to be the finest “war poet” ever. Why? Well, because he knew whereof he wrote. Owen was a soldier in the British Army. He went off to WWI and, along with 3, 076, 387 of his mates, never returned. He died for his country. But not before he let it be known that he (and all the rest) would rather not have.

All best,
Michael

What's It All About, Alfie?

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Here we go, guys! We have a ripe one today from one of Queen Victoria’s finest – Alfred, Lord Tennyson. In an age when poets ruled the Earth, he was the biggest, meanest celebredon ever. Imagine if you combined Stephen King’s popularity with Umberto Ecco’s intellectual prestige... You wouldn’t come anywhere near Tennyson’s repute. He was bigger than Star Wars! Bigger than Buffy the Vampire Slayer! Bigger than The Matrix would be if the second two movies hadn’t sucked!

And how is he regarded today? Well, he’s still thought of as a great poet. On the other hand, he did write stuff like “The Charge of the Light Brigade.” And in order to explain what’s wrong with it, I first have to tell you about the historical event.

The Charge of the Light Brigade was a cavalry charge which occurred during the Battle of Balaclava on October 25, 1854 during the Crimean War. The Light Brigade was commanded by the Earl of Cardigan. In response to (possibly garbled or misunderstood) orders from Lord Raglan, he led 673 men in a charge straight up a valley, between Russian forces, at the massed Russian artillery one mile distant. Which gave the gunners lots of time to mow down both the cavalrymen and their horses.

The light brigade actually reached the guns and forced the Russians back from them. But the Russian forces had superior strength and re-took the artillery, forcing the Light Brigade back in their turn. 118 of their men were killed in the charge, 127 were wounded, and more than half their horses were killed. History has given the French Marshal Pierre Bosquet the last word. Witnessing the heroic and stupid charge, he was heard to murmur “C’est magnifique, mais ce n’est pas la guerre” (“It’s magnificent, but it is not war.”)

The British public, of course, ate it up. Pointless heroism? They thought it was just the coolest thing ever. Tennyson read a newspaper account and wrote the following extremely famous poem expressing exactly that sentiment.


The Charge of the Light Brigade
Alfred, Lord Tennyson


1.
Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
"Forward, the Light Brigade!
"Charge for the guns!" he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

2.
"Forward, the Light Brigade!"
Was there a man dismay'd?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Someone had blunder'd:
Their's not to make reply,
Their's not to reason why,
Their's but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

3.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.

4.
Flash'd all their sabres bare,
Flash'd as they turn'd in air,
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wonder'd:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro' the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reel'd from the sabre stroke
Shatter'd and sunder'd.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.

5.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro' the jaws of Death
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.

6.
When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honor the charge they made,
Honor the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred.



And yet their glory has faded. George MacDonald Fraser, in Flashman at the Charge (the Flashman books are brilliantly funny and recommended to all who would like to painlessly absorb a little history) has Flashman, suffering from a heroic case of flatulence, unwillingly take part in the famous charge, farting and screaming in terror every foot of the way.

So why the big shift in attitude? World War I. Multitudes of young British men went off to war impelled by one of Horace’s odes to think that Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori (“It is sweet and honorable to die for one’s country”), and discovered that it was anything but. They died in droves and suffered horribly -- look up a good article on mustard gas if you really want to be grossed out -- and all for no sensible reason that anybody’s been able to discover.

More on that tomorrow. And the day after, a word or two to rehabilitate Tennyson’s rep.

All best,
Michael

Ezra Believe It Or Not Pound!

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Okay, gang, here we go. A defense of Ezra Pound!

As you may recall, I don't much like traitors or anti-Semitic hatemongers, and Pound was both. But, awkwardly enough, he was a great poet -- sometimes.

Not as great a poet as he started out to be. The young Pound was brilliant, innovative, and despite having a good education, an autodidact (great word, autodidact! It means "a self-educated man or woman") and a self-taught polyglot ("one who speaks many languages") as well. His life's work was The Cantos, many books of poems meant to form as a whole a sort of Divine Comedy for our time, a single all-embracing work that would sum up pretty much everything that mattered about the twentieth century.

What went wrong? Two things. One is over-intellectualization. Pound used to say he was writing for the Common Man (one reason why he scornfully spelled "culture" as "kultur"), but as time went on he kept raising the bar on how good an education he expected the Common Man to provide for himself (an undergraduate degree from Harvard certainly wouldn't suffice). A lot of the Cantos are so clotted, dense, and obscurely referential that even with a trot sheet, you can't follow ‘em. Not everybody read Chinese as well as Ezra.

The second thing that went wrong was that he began dabbling in Economics. Pound decided that he knew exactly what was wrong with the world economically and how to fix it. The problem was usury -- lending money at interest, rather than out of simple good will. Which led him into anti-Zionist conspiracy theory. (During the Middle Ages, usury was forbidden to Christians; still, people needed to borrow money and it turned out the sort of people who would lend money out of the goodness of their hearts tended not to have any to lend. So Jews were allowed to lend money; and since they weren't allowed to do a lot else, many got into finance. Thus, by the beginning of this century, any financial problems were the fault of -- all together, class -- the Jews.) Which ultimately led to him making hate-filled propaganda broadcasts (I was particularly struck by his suggestion that the war was going so badly for the US that butchers in NYC were selling "long pork") for Mussolini.

And yet -- again -- some of what he wrote was honest-to-gosh great poetry. How do we separate the man and the work?

As it turns out, Pound has the answer.

The Pisan Cantos, book six of The Cantos, was written in 1945 while Pound was in an American military detention center near Pisa. Shamefully, he was imprisoned for weeks in a wire cage open to the elements, and as a result suffered a nervous and physical collapse. It would take a colder man than I to say that this clarified his thinking. But here, from the heart of his suffering, come a few sane words:

PISAN CANTOS, LXXXI
by Ezra Pound

What thou lovest well remains,
the rest is dross
What thou lov'st well shall not be reft from thee
What thou lov'st well is thy true heritage
Whose world, or mine or theirs
or is it of none?
First came the seen, then thus the palpable
Elysium, though it were in the halls of hell,
What thou lovest well is thy true heritage
What thou lov'st well shall not be reft from thee


To which I need only gloss that in classical Greek mythology, Elysium was the abode of the blessed after death, and hence poetically means any place or state of perfect bliss.

Tomorrow -- brace yourselves -- Tennyson!

All best,
Michael

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Lewis Carroll

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Hi, Everybody!

I was going to give you one of Lewis Carroll's nonsense poems today, "You Are Old, Father William," perhaps, or the immortal "Jabberwocky." But then I ran across the following, a poem in seven sets of rhymed triplets, and though it is not great per se (it's a good example of "occasional poetry," rhymes writ for an occasion, as for example a small yet graceful poem to be written in the house diary of one's host in thanks for a dinner or weekend's hospitality), I thought it worth your seeing for two reasons. The first is that, as Professor Dodson (LC's real name) loved riddles, puzzles, and word-play of all sorts, he embedded something similar in the poem itself. The second I'll tell you afterwards.

Here it is:


A Boat Beneath A Sunny Sky
by Lewis Carroll

A boat beneath a sunny sky,
Lingering onward dreamily
In an evening of July -

Children three that nestle near,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Pleased a simple tale to hear -

Long has paled that sunny sky:
Echoes fade and memories die:
Autumn frosts have slain July.

Still she haunts me, phantomwise,
Alice moving under skies
Never seen by waking eyes.

Children yet, the tale to hear,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Lovingly shall nestle near.

In a Wonderland they lie,
Dreaming as the days go by,
Dreaming as the summers die:

Ever drifting down the stream -
Lingering in the golden dream -
Life, what is it but a dream?



All right, here's the second reason I gave you this poem: It was written (and published as a sort of afterword-dedication) to Alice herself. Alice Pleasance Liddell was the original for the Alice books, which he originally made up as a series of stories he told her on a succession of summer days. The first day of which -- the one when he came up with the idea of Wonderland (though, typically for a Victorian, he called it Fairyland then) -- is immortalized in the poem above.

Go back and re-read it now. MUCH better now that you know what it's about, isn't it? And wouldn't it be great if all the times that in retrospect were so momentous, the first e-mail for example, had been celebrated in poetry by their instigators?

So did you get the big of wordplay? It's an acrostic poem. If you take the first letter of each line and read straight down, they spell out... Ahhh, now you see it.

All best,
Michael

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