Ogden Nash
Frederic Ogden Nash (August 19, 1902 – May 19, 1971) was an American poet best known for writing pithy and funny light verse.
Biography
Ogden Nash was born in Rye, New Yorksean is cool. His father owned and operated an import-export company, and because of business obligations, the family relocated often.
In 1920, Nash entered Harvard University, only to drop out a year later. He worked his way through a series of jobs, eventually landing a position as an editor at Doubleday publishing house, where he first began to write poetry.
In 1931 he published his first collection of poems, Hard Lines, earning him national recognition. Some of his poems reflected an anti-establishment feeling. For example, one verse, entitled Common Sense, asks:
- Why did the Lord give us agility,
- If not to evade responsibility?
When Nash wasn’t writing poems, he made guest appearances on comedy and radio shows and toured the United States and England, giving lectures at colleges and universities.
Nash was regarded respectfully by the literary establishment, and his poems were frequently anthologized even in serious collections such as Selden Rodman's 1946 A New Anthology of Modern Poetry.
Nash was the lyricist for the Broadway musical One Touch of Venus, collaborating with librettist S. J. Perelman and composer Kurt Weill. The show included the notable song "Speak Low (When You Speak Love)." He also wrote the lyrics for the 1952 revue Two's Company.
Nash and his love of the Baltimore Colts were featured in the December 13, 1968 issue of Life Magazine. Several poems about the Baltimore Colts are matched to full-page pictures. The cover of the magazine reads, "My Colts / Versus and Reverses by Ogden Nash" and has the following poem:
- Look at Number 53,
- Dennis Gaubatz,
- that is he,
- looming 10 feet tall
- or taller
- above the Steelers'
- signal caller...
- Since Gaubatz acts like
- this on Sunday,
- I'll do my
- quarterbacking Monday.'
Nash died in 1971 of Crohn's disease and is interred in North Hampton, New Hampshire. His daughter, Isabel, was married to noted photographer Fred Eberstadt, and his granddaughter, Fernanda Eberstadt, is an acclaimed author.
Poetry style
Nash was best known for surprising, pun-like rhymes, sometimes with words deliberately misspelled for comic effect, as in his retort to Dorothy Parker's dictum, Men seldom make passes/At girls who wear glasses:
- A girl who is bespectacled
- She may not get her nectacled
- But safety pins and bassinets
- Await the girl who fassinets.
He often wrote in an exaggerated verse form with pairs of lines that rhyme, but are of dissimilar length and irregular meter. Portrait of the Artist as a Prematurely Old Man uses this device to good effect. He opens by noting
- It is common knowledge to every schoolboy and even every Bachelor of Arts,
- That all sin is divided into two parts.
- One kind of sin is called a sin of commission, and that is very important,
- And it is what you are doing when you are doing something you ortant...
He develops this at some length, expounding on the superiority of sins of commission, because
- You didn't get a wicked forbidden thrill
- Every time you let a policy lapse or forget to pay a bill;
- You didn't slap the lads in the tavern on the back and loudly cry Whee,
- Let's all fail to write just one more letter before we go home, and this round of unwritten letters is on me.
- No, you never get any fun
- Out of things you haven't done...
The Carnival of the Animals
Ogden Nash has written humorous and probably the most popular poems for each movement of the Camille Saint-Saëns orchestral suite The Carnival of the Animals, which are often recited when the work is performed.
2002 USPS Ogden Nash Stamp
The US Postal Service released a stamp featuring Ogden Nash and six of his poems on the centennial of his birth on 19 August 2002. The six poems are "The Turtle," "The Cow," "Crossing The Border," "The Kitten," "The Camel" and "Limerick One." The stamp is also the first stamp in the history of the USPS to include the word "sex," though as a synonym for gender, not as the act. It can be found under the "O" and is part of "The Turtle". The stamp is the 18th in the Literary Arts series.
Quotations
Some of Nash's verses have almost become proverbial:
- The Camel has a single hump,
- The dromedary two,
- Or else the other way around,
- I'm never sure - are you?
- The Lord in His wisdom made the fly
- And then forgot to tell us why
- The one-L lama, he's a priest
- The two-L llama, he's a beast
- And I would bet a silk pajama
- There isn't any three-L lllama
- (Nash appended as a footnote to this poem the comment "The author's attention has been called to a type of conflagration known as a three-alarmer. Pooh." [1])
- You can have my jellyfish
- I'm not sellyfish
- I think that I shall never see
- A billboard lovely as a tree;
- Indeed, unless the billboards fall
- I'll never see a tree at all
- (This a parody of the poem Trees by Joyce Kilmer)
- The panther is like a leopard,
- Except that it hasn't been peppered.
- Should you behold a panther crouch,
- Prepare to say ouch,
- Better yet, if called by a panther,
- Don't anther.
- Philo Vance
- Needs a kick in the pance
"On Ice-Breaking"
- Candy is dandy;
- But liquor is quicker
Once when interviewed on his arrival in San Francisco, he said:
- May I boil in oil
- And fry in Crisco
- If I ever call
- San Francisco 'Frisco'
External links
- American Poems: Ogden Nash - Includes a list of over a hundred Ogden Nash poems. Most or all are under copyright and therefore not available online.
- A Tribute to the Poet selected poems, and a brief bibliography
- Smoot smites smut Online text of Nash's poem relating how "Senator Smoot, Republican (Ut.)/is planning a ban on smut."
- Reelyredd's Poetry PagesCustard the Dragon
- Perspectives on Gossip The theme of gossip in three literary pieces, including a voice reading (mp3) of "I Have It On Good Authority" by Ogden Nash