I’m a Brit so American poets were not a large part of the curriculum when I went to school all those years ago. Having said that, his work did get a mention in our English literature course along with notable American authors such as Steinbeck and Hemingway.
Talking to a friends university educated daughter recently I was surprised that she had never heard of him.
That got me wondering how well his work was known in the US and whether it was taught in school.
One of my favourites:
Behold the hippopotamus!
We laugh at how he looks to us,
And yet in moments dank and grim,
I wonder how we look to him.
Peace, peace, thou hippopotamus!
We really look all right to us,
As you no doubt delight the eye
Of other hippopotami.
We were taught about him in school. I always liked his sillier poems - my favorites are:
*The Cow *
The cow is of the bovine ilk;
One end is moo, the other, milk.
*The Centipede *
I objurgate the centipede,
A bug we do not really need.
At sleepy-time he beats a path
Straight to the bedroom or the bath.
You always wallop where he’s not,
Or, if he is, he makes a spot.
I forgot to list my favorite Ogden Nash poem! Okay, this may or may not be my favorite, but it is one that I can always remember and it hasn’t been offered yet:
Beneath this slab
John Brown is stowed.
He watched the ads
And not the road.
We were taught about Steinbeck and Hemingway (just to use the two that you listed) but I’ve never heard of Ogden Nash. Went to high school in the US in the last ten years.
I never learned about Ogden Nash in school, but when I was about 8 or 9, I bought a book of his poetry at a school book fair. He quickly became a favorite. I passed the book down to my 10 year old son and he loves it now, too. (I’m 41.)
Still, you’ve got our curiosity aflame: what was the poem? (I almost made the same mistake with the Purple Cow poem by Gelett Burgess.)
I’m…not quite sixty yet…and grew up in a house full of fine literature…and the other kind too. I was reading Ogden Nash from when I was too young to get the jokes.
Come live with me and be my love
And we will all the pleasures prove
Of a marriage conducted with economy
In the Twentieth Century Anno Donomy.
We’ll live in a dear little walk-up flat
With practically room to swing a cat
And a potted cactus to give it hauteur
And a bathtub equipped with dark brown water.
We’ll eat, without undue discouragement
Foods low in cost but high in nouragement
And quaff with pleasure, while chatting wittily
The peculiar wine of Little Italy.
We’ll remind each other it’s smart to be thrifty
And buy our clothes for something-fifty.
We’ll stand in line on holidays
For seats at unpopular matinees,
And every Sunday we’ll have a lark
And take a walk in Central Park.
And of these days not too remote
I’ll probably up and cut your throat.
I was growing up in the 60s, when Nash was the most popular poet in America. In late 1968, he wrote a series of poems in Life Magazine praising the various members of the Baltimore Colts (he was from Baltimore). When the Jets won the Super Bowl, he grudgingly wrote one in praise of the Jets.
My favorite:
The Bat
Myself I rather like the bat.
It’s not a mouse; it’s not a rat.
It has no feathers, but has wings.
And is quite inaudible when he sings.
He tiptoes through the summer air
And never lands in ladies hair.
A fact of which men spend their lives
Attempting to convince their wives.
Of course, Nash’s trademark was the uneven line – one short line and another about three times as long with the same rhyme. He’s the only one who could manage that and make it work. For instance:
Everybody Tells Me Everything:
I find it very difficult to enthuse
Over the current news.
Just when you think that at least the outlook is so black that it can grow no blacker, it worsens,
And that is why I do not like the news, because there has never been an era when so many things were going so right for so many of the wrong persons.
I love his text for Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals:
*The kangaroo can jump incredible,
He has to jump because he is edible.
I could not eat a kangaroo,
But many fine Australians do.
Those with cookbooks as well as boomerangs,
Prefer him in tasty kangaroomeringues.
*The lion is the king of beasts,
And husband of the lioness.
Gazelles and things on which he feasts
Address him as your highoness.
There are those that admire that roar of his,
In the African jungles and velds,
But, I think that wherever the lion is,
I’d rather be somewhere else.
