A very enjoyable collection of "bite-sized" poems that is a good "pick up once in a while" book. I was first exposed to archy and mehitabel in high school but I found that the poems have much more resonance with the passing of years. The poems are written by "archy", a free verse poet in a past life who has been reincarnated as a philosophical cockroach. He writes by diving headfirst onto a typerwiter -- rendering capital letters and punctuation moot. He observes life around him, and also tells tales of his friend mehitabel, a cat who claims to have been Cleopatra. archy's unique writing style will require your complete concentration and the occasional reread; but this is part of the fun as you come to appreciate his wry view of the world. This is offset by the somewhat tragic figure of mehitabel, who strives to be "always gay" despite her fall from the days of Cleopatra.