Yeah. Better in Rhyme. But Good Little Interesting Pithy Bits Nonetheless . . .

I have just finished reading The Lives and Times of Archy and Mehitabel. I won’t say I liked it, because I didn’t. But it had its good moments.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Archy, the vers libre poet trapped in the body of a cockroach, is actually at his best poetically when he uses structure and rhyme to build his poems. I may just be displaying a prejudice for tight structure, which I prefer in the poems I write, so take that as you may.

But he does have a few free verse gems, like this:

(From the poem “Archy on the Radio,” in which he responds to fan messages from the planet Mars)

mars

did you know about the archy clubs here

archy

i hope they can t throw them this far

what do they look like

mars

ha dumbbells ha ha ha

but please tell us how you happened

to start your career as a writer

archy

it did not happen it was something

i planned deliberately so I could quit

being what I was

Never a truer statement said by any writer on why he or she writes.

And then there’s this, from the poem “Random Thoughts from Archy”:

i have noticed

that when

chickens quit

quarreling over their

food they often

find that there is

enough for all of them

i wonder if

it might not

be the same way

with the

human race

Lots of fun little bits. But a slog to get to them. Poetry, indeed, has to be read in small doses, and with free verse poetry, the smaller the better.

Archy, the Vers Libre Poet, Does Better in Rhyme

The irony of Don Marquis’ The Lives and Times of Archy and Mehitabel isn’t that a vers libre poet’s soul has transmigrated into the body of a cockroach – but that this vers libre poet’s structured, rhyming bits of verse are the best bits of poetry in the book.

Now, that may be my own biased ear’s longing for rhyme and structure coming through, but I’m tempted to think I’m more right than my prejudices might allow.

Consider the following:

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

Here we have a bit of delightful nonsense verse that plays well with the tight structure it follows. It’s readable. It’s memorable. It’s fun. It’s not like Marquis’ “vers libre” throughout the book, mushed together and mostly forgettable, even as it tells the tales of archy the cockroach and mehitabel the alley cat.

It’s quite possible I’m reading these poems the wrong way, or that I expect poems to rhyme. I freely confess that I’ve written both structured and free verse poetry, and find the structured poetry oh so much more memorable. It’s too easy, I think, to ramble on in free verse, but with a rhyming structure to meet, the writer has to show more discipline, more creativity, and more storytelling to pull the poem off.