this is how it goes ....

sis and i were having a discussion on how to
spell "pfft" when conversing on the computer ...
she maintained it had one "f" and i said it has two ...
we agreed to disagree ... then she said that it
had to have a capital "P" and i said "i never use capitals
cuz it's too much trouble to press the shift key" .... as the
conversation trailed off, i thought of e.e.cummings and that i used
to enjoy his poetry and he got by fine not using any CAPS, and
then i got the "feeling" that i was supposed to do a search
on him cuz there was a message waiting for me ... and
so i began ... i thought i remembered a poem with
"mehizabel" in it, but that turned out to be a book i
was remembering where the author, also, used no caps ....
and here is what attracted me, after sifting through a bit from
both authors:

Quote :

warty bliggens, the toad

By Don Marquis, in "archy and mehitabel," 1927


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 same
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
if i were a
human being i would
not laugh
too complacently
at poor warty bliggens
for similar
absurdities
have only too often
lodged in the crinkles
of the human cerebrum

archy

and now i wonder: why was a 10 yr old in 1963
reading a book published in 1927 (this is NOT a children's book)
and then remembering, because of the syle and one unusual
name, "mehitabel", i come across a poem/story in 2011
which pinches a long-ago-lost impression?

Hippie
you got my interest ..i have always liked nonsensical poems so i looked him up..copied below
my first thought was maybe an answer to your question of what was a 10 old ....
i thought..well it was written in the year of your birth and maybe some relative thought it timely to share with you when you were 10
just a thought




Archy and MehitabelFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaJump to: navigation, search

The first illustration of Archy. Seen in an advertisement in the New York Tribune on September 11, 1922, introducing the new column.Archy and Mehitabel (styled as archy and mehitabel) is the title of a series of newspaper columns written by Don Marquis beginning in 1916. Written as fictional social commentary and intended as a space-filler to allow Marquis to meet the challenge of writing a daily newspaper column six days a week, archy and mehitabel is Marquis' most famous work. Collections of these stories are still sold in print today. The published editions of these stories were originally illustrated by George Herriman, the creator and illustrator of Krazy Kat.

Contents [hide]
1 History
2 Publications
3 Theatre and film
4 In popular culture
5 Notes
6 External links


[edit] HistoryIn 1916, Marquis introduced Archy, a fictional cockroach, into his daily newspaper column at The New York Evening Sun. Archy (whose name was always written in lower case in the book titles, but was upper case when Marquis would write about him in narrative form) was a cockroach who had been a free verse poet in a previous life, and took to writing stories and poems on an old typewriter at the newspaper office when everyone in the building had left. Archy would climb up onto the typewriter and hurl himself at the keys, laboriously typing out stories of the daily challenges and travails of a cockroach. Archy's best friend was Mehitabel, an alley cat. The two of them shared a series of day-to-day adventures that made satiric commentary on daily life in the city during the 1910s and 1920s.

Because he was a cockroach, Archy was unable to operate the shift key on the typewriter (he jumped on each key to type; since using shift requires two keys to be pressed simultaneously, he physically could not use capitals), and so all of his verse was written without capitalization or punctuation. (Writing in his own persona, though, Marquis always used correct capitalization and punctuation. As E. B. White wrote in his introduction to The Lives and Times of Archy and Mehitabel, it would be incorrect to conclude that, "because Don Marquis's cockroach was incapable of operating the shift key of a typewriter, nobody else could operate it.")

There was at least one point in which Archy happened to jump onto the shift lock key—a chapter titled Capitals at Last (styled as CAPITALS AT LAST).

[edit] PublicationsCollections of the "Archy" stories have been published and re-printed numerous times over the years. Titles in the series include:

Archy and Mehitabel (1927)
Archys Life of Mehitabel (1933)
Archy Does his Part (1935)
The Lives and Times of Archy and Mehitabel (1940)
Archyology (1996)
Archyology II (1998)
The Annotated Archy and Mehitabel (2006)
Archyology and Archyology II were compiled and published for the first time in the late 1990s. The Annotated Archy and Mehitabel was released in July 2006 with critical editing provided by Michael Sims.

[edit] Theatre and filmA muscial version of the Archy and Mehitabel was recorded July 7th, 1953 & April 9th, 1954 titled archy and mehitabel with Carol Channing as Mehitabel and Eddie Bracken as Archy. It was followed by echoes of archy, recorded August 31st, 1954. The credits read: Words - Joe Darion, Music - George Kleinsinger. It was originally released as Columbia Materworks ML 4963 in 1955, and was rereleased on CD, combined with the unrelated work Carnival of the Animals, as part of the Columbia Masterworks series.

The music and lyrics from the album were the basis of a short-lived 1957 loud and brassy Broadway musical titled Shinbone Alley and staring Eddie Bracken as Archy and Eartha Kitt as Mehitabel. It was based on the columns and on the Columbia Masterworks album, but with additional music by Kleinsinger and dialog by Mel Brooks.

On May 16, 1960, an abridged version of the musical was broadcast under the original title archy & mehitabel as part of the syndicated TV anthology series Play of the Week presented by David Susskind. The cast included Bracken, Tammy Grimes, and Jules Munshin.

Some of the songs from the album were used in 1971 in an animated film, also called Shinbone Alley.[1] Directed by John Wilson, written by Mel Brooks, and starring Eddie Bracken and Carol Channing, it was not a commercial success.

[edit] In popular cultureArchy has been known to make appearances in newspaper columns throughout the years by different newspaper writers.

In the 3 August, 2007 issue of Science an editorial[2] was run claiming to be written by Mehitabel commenting on a recent paper about the domestication of cats.

and

Mehitabel meaning and name origin
Mehitabel \mehi-ta-bel\ as a girl's name is of Hebrew origin, and the meaning of Mehitabel is "God rejoices". Biblical name used by writer Don Marquis in his tales of the great friends "archy and mehitabel", a cockroach and a cat.

Mehitabel has 6 variant forms: Mahitable, Mehetabel, Mehitabelle, Mehitable, Hetty and Hitty.

Another synchronistic moment.

Thanks for sharing the poem as it's all new to me!

I like poems like that, simple enough to explain to anyone young and old that there is a purpose and if my purpose reveals itself I will let you know.

I am wondering about pfft myself now hippie girl.

Reunite wrote:

Another synchronistic moment.

Thanks for sharing the poem as it's all new to me!

i knew the froggie would like the toad poem ......