Kitty Kilian, To hell with anything unrefined, 10 x 15 cm/ 4 x 6 in, mixed media
Don Marquis was an American writer/columnist who in 1916 the introduced the poetic cockroach Archy in his column in The New York Sun.
Archy types poems on Don Marquis’s typewriter, at night.
He has a friend called Mehitabel, who is a slutty street cat. She fancies herself an artist and believes she is a reincarnation of Cleopatra. She continually falls for the wrong type of cat, and complains about how the ensuing litters of kittens hold her back from artistic fulfilment.
The quote I used above is one of hers.
Their hilarious dialogues have been written in free verse without capitals, because on an oldfashioned typewriter a cockroach could of course only press down one key at the time.
Archy’s own musings are amazingly philosophical.
In the US Don Marquis is a household name – although less so than Dr. Zeuss. I got introduced to Don Marquis by a friend who loves to quote Mehitabel’s ‘There’s life in the old dame yet.’
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Tags: cockroach, don marquis, mehitabel, new york sun, slider
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