#don marquis

[neil-gaiman]

Because I have over the years posted it on Xitter, but not on here, another poem by Archy the Cockroach. (He writes in lower case as he is jumping onto the typewriter keyboard head first in order to type, as in this illustration by George Herriman.)

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 center 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 favored

ask rather

said warty bliggens

what the universe

has done to deserve me

--Don Marquis 1878-1937

--from Archy & Mehitabel

#warty bliggens #don marquis #george herriman

[lionofchaeronea]

Reading The Annotated Archy and Mehitabel (Penguin Classics). For those unfamiliar with them, Archy and Mehitabel are creations of the great newspaper columnist Don Marquis that first appeared in the New York Sun in 1916. Archy is a free-verse poet who had the ill luck to be reincarnated as a cockroach; he can only write by hurling himself headfirst onto the keys of Marquis's typewriter. His friend Mehitabel is a hedonistic alley cat who claims to have once been Cleopatra. Through the two characters, Marquis expressed all sorts of wry observations about America and the wider world, often tinging his humor with cynicism in the best satiric tradition. Wonderful stuff, especially with the helpful annotations supplied by editor Michael Sims.

#personal #current reading #don marquis #archy and mehitabel

[omophagias]

ed frascino, 1996. illustration for don marquis’s poem “mehitabel s motto,” in archyology: the long lost tales of archy and mehitabel.

#.img #art #archy and mehitabel #ed frascino #don marquis #felidae

[haveyoureadthispoem-poll]

"...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..."

Read it here | Reblog for a larger sample size!

#closed polls #polls #poetry #poems #poetry polls #poets and writing #tumblr poetry #have you read this #the lesson of the moth #don marquis #nature poetry

[journeys-of-discovery]

the lesson of the moth by archy (a poem by Don Marquis)

(The character of Archy, created by Don Marquis in 1916, was a cockroach who had been a poet in a previous incarnation. To write he must leap headfirst onto the keys of a typewriter, and thus is unable to capitalize his letters.)

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 to cease to

exist than to exist forever

and never be a part of beauty

our attitude toward life

is to 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 #lesson of the moth

[wtfcl0ud]

ME WHEN 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

#the lesson of the moth #Don Marquis #cloud nonsense #poetry

[by-talos]

the worst thing i’ve ever done is want it too bad

i was talking to a moth

the other evening

he was trying to break into

an electric lightbulb

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 an 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 up all our life

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

out attitude toward life

is easy come easy go

we are like human beings

used to be before they became

too civilised 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

the lesson of the moth by archy (1927) by Don Marquis

I, Tonya (2017) by Craig Gillespie

Macbeth (c1606) by William Shakespeare

The Fallen Angel (1847) by Alexandre Cabanel | The Kiss (1882) by Auguste Rodin

Ozymandias (1818) by Percy Bysshe Shelley

The Lament of Icarus (1898) by Herbert James Draper | The Unfortunate Gregor Samsa (2012) by Rich Johnson

#art compilation #my post #the lesson of the moth by archy #don marquis #i tonya #margot robbie #lady macbeth #william shakespeare #the fallen angel #alexandre cabanel #the kiss #auguste rodin #ozymandias #percy bysshe shelley #gregor samsa #the metamorphosis #the lament of icarus #herbert james draper #ambition #ambition is the folly of man

[marysia94]

SOME NATURAL HISTORY

the patagonian

penguin

is a most

peculiar

bird

he lives on

pussy

willows

and his tongue

is always furred

the porcupine

of chile

sleeps his life away

and that is how

the needles

get into the hay

the Argentinian

oyster

is a very

subtle gink

for when he's

being eaten

he pretends he is

a skink

when you see

a sea gull

sitting

on a bald man's dome

she likely thinks

she's nesting

on her rocky

island home

do not tease

the inmates

when strolling

through the zoo

for they have

their finer feelings

the same

as me and you

oh deride not

the camel

if grief should

make him die

his ghost will come

to haunt you

with tears

in either eye

and the spirit of

a camel

in the midnight gloom

can be so very

cheerless

as it wanders

round the room

#don marquis #archy and mehitabel #archy the cockroach #fav #m

[outlikethat]

fic stats game

Rules: Give us the links to your fics with the most hits, second most kudos, third most bookmarks, fourth most comments, fifth most words, and your fic with the least amount of words.

Open tag accepted from @runawaymarbles

Being as I’m primarily a podficcer, I’ll arbitrarily use slightly different metrics for some of these.

Most hits: The MOST most hits (not counting Crown of Thorns, which I won’t, because it’s a multivoice juggernaut) is tentacular Good Omens fx-fest Pale Tendrils, by Anonymous. Understandable — come for the tentacles, stay for the witty writing and my unabashedly gleeful porn-formance. However, the secondmost hits is more interesting, because what the fuck. The hits on Only the Third Story in this Forsaken Fandom Whose Title Does Not Begin With If, by seekingferret, have been steadily climbing since I posted it — without at all a corresponding number of kudos, and no comments. It’s a highly meta If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler / 1/0 / 2666 by Robert Bolano Yuletide story, and while I like it a lot, I do not know what this unprecedented click rate means, at all. At first I thought it was bots, but I locked it down and the steady hits — sometimes ten or more per day — continued. Yeah, I dunno. Couldn’t happen to a more apt bunch of fandoms though.

Second-most kudos: What a Way to Make a Living, by attheborder, a Good Omens story in which Crowley, at a loss without his hellish assignments from Downstairs, becomes an Uber driver. Or, what if Crowley had ADHD? Includes “freelance chickens”, one of the most difficult phrases I’ve ever tried to record coherently.

Third-most words: Well, I thought I could go for “third longest,” and then realised that (because, unlike some podficcers, I don’t keep a detailed spreadsheet of my creations with word count, finished length, and a whole lot of other fascinating statistics, and AO3 doesn’t helpfully sort by podfic length tag) this was more work than I was willing to go to, especially on my phone, since I don’t feel like crossing the room and sitting in my office chair again to use the real computer.

So, third longest, ish, maybe, since Sansûkh isn’t finished yet (and anyway, I’m only counting multivoice and group projects when I feel like it, but also this is one of the times, kind of) is Once There Was, Once There Wasn’t, 2022’s Pod Together project from The Sentient Hive. This is a queer playable interactive game inspired by fairytales from around the world, with four different interlinked storylines. Hive projects are some of my favourite things to work on; most of what I did for this one was art, but I also read the Witch. This is approximately 6-7 hours of content. You can read the stories and listen to the audio on AO3, or play the complete, gamified Twine version with interactive puzzles on itch.io.

Fourth-most comments: Good Omens again (surprise surprise), equestrianstatue’s A Kind of Magic. Another very funny piece, because I have a Brand, with some of my personal favourite cover art — the idea for it made me laugh out loud when it occurred to me, and I still think it’s very funny. In a graphic design kind of way.

Fifth-most words: Hm. The sort-by-length thing just isn’t on, is it? Howbout first thing from the bottom with five comments? That might get us into some of the more obscure delights at the bottom of my catalogue… oh. ahahahaha! Not a podfic! This ancient and breathless little number, A Gamble in Darkness, is the backgrounder I wrote for my Toreador character back when I played in a vampire LARP. Well, it does have a few nice turns of phrase floating in the sea of purple prose.

The first-from-the-bottom podfic with five comments is He Who Is Made of Iron, a gently atmospheric Queen’s Thief piece mostly about tea by EternalLibrary. I recorded this very quickly during a rainstorm; it’s an unadorned and simple reading of a nice little story.

Fewest words: An obvious one — it has no words at all. (🌚🦋) 🧑🏫 is the all-emoji translation of Don Marquis’ the lesson of the moth, in collaboration with @olive2read. Includes text-to-speech audio for the full absurdist experience! This one is another personal favourite.

I’ll continue with tagging anyone who wants to do it. heck, if you do have a spreadsheet, use different stats!

#tag memes #fic stats #good omens #the queen's thief #vampire the masquerade #the sentient hive #fairy tales #tentacles #if on a winter’s night a traveller #that one podfic with all the hits; what the fuck continued #don marquis #archy and mehitabel #let me read you a story! #reccing my own podfic

[stainlesssteellocust]

What with that post about The Lesson of the Moth doing numbers I thought I’d share one of my other archy faves bc that cockroach does not miss. I don’t think the bit about the Aztecs is strictly true but I’ll let him off this one time:

dear boss i was talking with an ant  the other day  and he handed me a lot of  gossip which ants the world around  are chewing over among themselves

i pass it on to you  in the hope that you may relay it to other  human beings and hurt their feelings with it  no insect likes human beings  and if you think you can see why  the only reason i tolerate you is because  you seem less human to me than most of them  here is what the ants are saying

it wont be long now it wont be long  man is making deserts of the earth  it wont be long now  before man will have used it up  so that nothing but ants  and centipedes and scorpions  can find a living on it  man has oppressed us for a million years  but he goes on steadily  cutting the ground from under  his own feet making deserts deserts deserts

we ants remember  and have it all recorded  in our tribal lore  when gobi was a paradise  swarming with men and rich  in human prosperity  it is a desert now and the home  of scorpions ants and centipedes

what man calls civilization  always results in deserts  man is never on the square  he uses up the fat and greenery of the earth  each generation wastes a little more  of the future with greed and lust for riches

north africa was once a garden spot  and then came carthage and rome  and despoiled the storehouse  and now you have sahara  sahara ants and centipedes

toltecs and aztecs had a mighty  civilization on this continent  but they robbed the soil and wasted nature  and now you have deserts scorpions ants and centipedes  and the deserts of the near east  followed egypt and babylon and assyria  and persia and rome and the turk  the ant is the inheritor of tamerlane  and the scorpion succeeds the caesars

america was once a paradise  of timberland and stream  but it is dying because of the greed  and money lust of a thousand little kings  who slashed the timber all to hell  and would not be controlled  and changed the climate  and stole the rainfall from posterity  and it wont be long now  it wont be long  till everything is desert  from the alleghenies to the rockies  the deserts are coming  the deserts are spreading  the springs and streams are drying up  one day the mississippi itself  will be a bed of sand ants and scorpions and centipedes  shall inherit the earth

men talk of money and industry  of hard times and recoveries  of finance and economics  but the ants wait and the scorpions wait  for while men talk they are making deserts all the time  getting the world ready for the conquering ant  drought and erosion and desert  because men cannot learn

rainfall passing off in flood and freshet  and carrying good soil with it  because there are no longer forests  to withhold the water in the  billion meticulations of the roots

it wont be long now It won't be long  till earth is barren as the moon  and sapless as a mumbled bone

dear boss i relay this information  without any fear that humanity  will take warning and reform archy

#poetry #don marquis #archy and mehitabel #clinmate change

[publicdomainbooksdevotee]

POV: you are reading something written by a New Yorker.

#archy and mehitabel #don marquis #i am self-aware enough to admit that this is how i talk about going up to los angeles #but still

[sivavakkiyar]

Archy & Mehitabel

#archy and mehitabel #don marquis #poetry

[shushmuckle]

Writer Don Marquis with Boston Terrier Pete.

#don marquis

[movie-titlecards]

The Beach Girls and the Monster (1965)

My rating: 5/10

Considering this is a beach movie (aka "background noise while your grandparents were making out in the theater") this one gets weirdly serious about the slasher/whodunit aspect of the whole thing. Pretty watchable, all things considered.

#The Beach Girls and the Monster #Jon Hall #Joan Gardner #Robert Silliphant #Don Marquis #Sue Casey #Walker Edmiston #Youtube

[ailelie]

I recently rec'd this to a friend, but I'm going to do a general rec, too.

Read Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers. It has nothing to do with Harry Potter and pre-dates that series by a lot.

This book is pure joy. I love it. When I'm in a bad mood I can cheer myself up by reading sections of it out loud. It is fantastic.

This series of short essays (more or less) and poems (I'm less fond of them) is by Don Marquis (Mar-quiss, weirdly enough), who also penned the much more well known Archy and Mehitabel that I've excerpted before.

Hermione is a privileged young woman who wants to be forward thinking and open minded. So she gathers her little group of serious thinkers together and they listen to various speakers and discuss such deep topics as vibrations and being other-worldly.

It is a product of its time, but is also a product of Hermione who just...tries so hard and gets so much wrong.

And then there's her ongoing, basically catchphrase: Have I (been independent/been untrammeled/vibrated in tune with the Infinite/Utile today/been a Stimulating Influence/etc) or have I FAILED?

The book is available for free here on Project Gutenberg.

To close, I will include some quotes and such from the book.

From "Politics"

I'M thinking of taking up politics in a practical way.

I've never been an active suffragist, you know, on account of that horrid yellow color on the banners and things.

But one must sacrifice Ideals of Beauty to Ideals of Usefulness, mustn't one?

And politics is fascinating; simply FASCINATING!

Going about and organizing working girls, you know, and seeing Corrupt Bosses and enlisting them for Moral Causes, and making one's self felt as a Force — could one make one's self more Utile?

More spiritually Utile?

Utility! That is what our Leaders of Thought need to develop!

Nearly every night before I go to bed I say to myself: "Have I been Utile today? Or have I FAILED?"

Politics, practical politics, will be such an outlet for my personality, too.

And when I reopen my Salon I can make it count for the Cause, too.

From "Hermione on Psychical Research"

And Spiritualism is somehow more — well, er — VULGAR if you get what I mean. The sort of people one cares to know well have dropped Spiritualism for Spiritism.

Though, of course, a ghost is a ghost, whether it is materialized by spiritualism or Spiritism.

I have been often told that I am naturally very clairvoyant — if I were developed I would make a splendid medium. Mediums have seen shapes hovering around my head, and once when I was at school I did some automatic writing.

It was the strangest, easiest thing! I had a pencil in my hand and without thinking of anything in particular at all I just scribbled away, and what I wrote was, "When in the course of human events it becomes necessary; When in the course of human events it becomes necessary," over and over again.

I was quite startled, for the last thing I had been thinking of was an algebra examination, and not history at all. We had had our history examination days before.

I felt as if an unseen hand had reached out of the Silences and grasped mine!

Wasn't it weird?

And I know who it was, too. A distant relative of Mamma's on her father's side, by marriage, was one of the men who signed the Constitution of the United States in Faneuil Hall, in Philadelphia, in 1776, and it was HIS spirit that was trying to de- liver his message through me!

From "How Suffering Purifies One"

Oh, to go through fire and come out purified! Suffering is wonderful, isn't it? Simply WONDERFUL!

The loveliest man talked to us the other night — to our Little Group of Serious Thinkers, you know — about social ideals and suffering.

The reason so many attempts to improve things fail, you know, is because the people who try them out haven't suffered personally.

He had the loveliest eyes, this man.

He made me thin[k]. I said to myself, "After all, have I suffered? Have I been purified by fire?"

And I decided that I had — that is spiritually, you know.

The suffering — the spiritual suffering — that I undergo through being misunderstood is something FRIGHTFUL!

Mamma discourages every Cause I take up. So does Papa.

I get no sympathy in my devotion to my ideals. Only opposition!

From "Fothergil Finch, The Poet of Revolt"

This one is a little different. She is quoting Finch who read her his "greatest" poem.

Look at me! Behold, I am founding a New Movement! Observe me. . . . I am in Revolt! I revolt! Now persecute me, persecute me, damn you,     persecute me, curse you, persecute me! Philistine, Bourgeois, Slave, Serf, Capitalist, Respectabilities that you are, Persecute me! Bah! You ask me, do you, what am I in revolt against? Against you, fool, dolt, idiot, against you, against     everything! Against Heavy, Hell and punctuation . . . against     Life, Death, rhyme and rhythm . . . Persecute me, now, persecute me, curse you,     persecute me! Slave that you are . . . what do Marriage,     Tooth-brushes, Nail-files, the Decalogue,     Handkerchiefs, Newton's Law of Gravity, Capital,     Barbers, Property, Publishers, Courts, Rhyming     Dictionaries, Clothes, Dollars, mean to Me?

I am a Giant, I am a Titan, I am a Hercules of Liberty, I am Prometheus, I am the Jess Willard of the New Cerebral Pugilism, I am the Modern Cave Man, I am the Comrade of the Cosmic Urge, I have kicked off the Boots of Superstition, and I run wild along the Milky Way without ingrowing toenails, I am I! Curse you, what are You? You are only You! Nothing more! Ha! Bah! . . . persecute me, now persecute me!

#rec #don marquis #hermione and her little group of serious thinkers #look it may sound like i'm making fun of hermione #and to an extent i am #but i also just love her so so much

[poems-everyday]

the lesson of the moth by archy (Don Marquis)

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 to cease to exist than to exist forever and never be a part of beauty our attitude toward life is to 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

#poetry #poems #the lesson of the moth by archy #don marquis