# Ogden Nash **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 14, 2014, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ogden-nash/690794 "2014-06-14T21:35:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2014, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ogden-nash/690794/41 "2014-06-15T23:34:18Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Nash was so distinctive that everyone from MAD to National Lampoon had a go of parodying him. > > The weirdest one I know, though, was by of all people Robert Coover, who used him to attack Nixon during Watergate. It’s called “The Royal Treatment” and starts like this: My mind is going. I meant Donald Barthelme. With the book sitting in front of me, yet. ---
**Author:** ![NDP](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ndp/32/55_2.png) [@NDP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NDP)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2014, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ogden-nash/690794/42 "2014-06-16T00:10:10Z")
> [@Snowboarder\_Bo](#): > > 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. Are you sure that’s not from Burma Shave?😃 ---
**Author:** ![rowrrbazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rowrrbazzle/32/414_2.png) [@rowrrbazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rowrrbazzle)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2014, 3:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ogden-nash/690794/43 "2014-06-16T03:52:10Z")
“Celery” Celery raw Develops the jaw. But celery stewed Is more quietly chewed. “Reflection on Babies” A bit of talcum Is always walcum. “The Firefly” The firefly’s flame Is something for which science has no name I can think of nothing eerier Than flying around with an unidentified glow on a person’s posteerier. ---
**Author:** ![cjepson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a9adbd/32.png) [@cjepson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cjepson)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2014, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ogden-nash/690794/44 "2014-06-16T04:46:46Z")
Amongst the anthropophagi People’s friends are people’s sarcophagi. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2014, 9:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ogden-nash/690794/45 "2014-06-16T09:18:45Z")
Back in college I once wrote up some stage directions for our drama club to visit kids’ Christmas parties and perform _The Boy Who Laughed at Santa Claus_. Poor Jabez Dawes. Good times. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Dervorin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/eb8c5e/32.png) [@Dervorin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dervorin)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2014, 10:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ogden-nash/690794/46 "2014-06-16T10:11:28Z")
I’ve loved Ogden Nash ever since I was a little kid, growing up in India. My poor long-suffering father must have read “The Wendigo” out to me about seventeen thousand times over the years, and I can still recite all of it by heart. Also “Custard the Dragon”, which was the other half of that book. Ah, good times. Then, when I was a bit older, I went and bought the collected works of Nash, and dip into it from time to time to renew my delight in his unconventional rhymes and gentle witty insight into human behaviour. A friend of mine asked me to do a reading at their wedding last year, and I chose to read Nash. No, not > [@](#): > > To keep your marriage brimming, > With love in the loving cup, > Whenever you’re wrong, admit it; > Whenever you’re right, shut up. but rather the splendid [I do, I will, I have](http://www.aenet.org/poems/ognash8.htm). It was much appreciated. ---
**Author:** ![Mean\_Mr.Mustard](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mean_mr.mustard/32/3865_2.png) [@Mean\_Mr.Mustard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mean_Mr.Mustard)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2014, 10:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ogden-nash/690794/47 "2014-06-16T10:58:57Z")
Some pains are physical and some pains are mental but the one that’s both is dental ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2014, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ogden-nash/690794/48 "2014-06-16T14:37:30Z")
The sweetbread is a type of meat That is neither bread nor sweet. And since it’s neither sweet nor bread I think I’ll have a bun instead. Isaac Asimov once remarked he tried to write a poem in the style of Ogden Nash because Nash made it look so easy. He discovered it’s only easy if your name is Ogden Nash. ---
**Author:** ![swampspruce](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/swampspruce/32/261_2.png) [@swampspruce](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/swampspruce)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2014, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ogden-nash/690794/49 "2014-06-16T15:03:51Z")
I had forgotten how much I enjoyed Ogden Nash’s work; thanks to all for brightening a rainy Monday for me! My dad peppered me when I was younger with bits of doggerel both his own and Nash’s. Unfortunately, it’s genetic and I have passed down the trait to my sons as well. ---
**Author:** ![phouka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c5a1d2/32.png) [@phouka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/phouka)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2014, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ogden-nash/690794/50 "2014-06-16T17:01:58Z")
All the ones I know and enjoy have already been posted. I will say that someone has set many of the animal poems to music, and several years ago, my church choir sang a handful of them - the panther, the firefly, and the cow. You can listen to a completely different choir sing them [here](http://www.sheetmusicplus.com/title/animal-crackers-sheet-music/17421948). ---
**Author:** ![Dendarii\_Dame](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bbce88/32.png) [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2014, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ogden-nash/690794/51 "2014-06-16T17:27:29Z")
A line from one of his longer poems (sadly, I can’t locate which one) is my favorite: (The narrator is challenged to use the word “affidavit” in a sentence) “Saul was the king before David, and Solomon was the king affidavit.” I tried to Google this, and came up with a post I made a long time ago to Trivia Dominoes. ---
**Author:** ![cjepson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a9adbd/32.png) [@cjepson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cjepson)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2014, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ogden-nash/690794/52 "2014-06-17T03:17:34Z")
Actually, maybe my favorite Ogden Nash poem is “Songs for a Boss Named Mr. Linthicum”, from _Hard Lines._ Unfortunately I can’t find a link to a copy of it. ---
**Author:** ![Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e47c2d/32.png) [@Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffy_the_Elephant_Shrew)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2014, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ogden-nash/690794/53 "2014-06-17T04:23:43Z")
> [@Dendarii\_Dame](#): > > A line from one of his longer poems (sadly, I can’t locate which one) is my favorite: > > (The narrator is challenged to use the word “affidavit” in a sentence) “Saul was the king before David, and Solomon was the king affidavit.” > > I tried to Google this, and came up with a post I made a long time ago to Trivia Dominoes. That was one of the “Strange Case” poems, [The Strange Case of Mr. Ballantine’s Valentine](http://blog.ogdennash.org/2010/02/mr-ballantines-valentine-by-ogden-nash.html). (In the actual book, each line of the “Strange Case” poems is separated by a dingbat.) ---
**Author:** ![vontsira](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/51bf81/32.png) [@vontsira](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vontsira)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2014, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ogden-nash/690794/54 "2014-06-17T21:53:11Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > 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’m British, born 1948; my parents were quite fans of things American, and we had at home a couple of small books anthologising various verse by Nash – as a kid, I read these with interest and, mostly, pleasure. I’ve tended particularly to like Nash’s “poems with rhyme but no metre”, as cited above (a way of versifying, which IMO has actually been imitated, quite well, by various others – the British humorist Paul Jennings, for one). I incline on the whole to like Nash’s “no metre” poems, better than his ones which scan – which latter strike me often as rather “whimsy” and cloying. There’s one “scanning” one of his, though, which I really love – his brief poem about the wombat. The wombat lives beyond the seas, Amid the far Antipodes. He may subsist on nuts and berries, Or then again, on missionaries. His distant habitat precludes Extensive knowledge of his moods; But I would not engage the wombat In any form of mortal combat. ---
**Author:** ![vontsira](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/51bf81/32.png) [@vontsira](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vontsira)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2014, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ogden-nash/690794/55 "2014-06-17T21:56:12Z")
> [@Mean\_Mr.Mustard](#): > > Some pains are physical > and some pains are mental > but the one that’s both > is dental Nash seemed decidedly to have a “thing” about dentists – it shows up in a number of his poems. ---
**Author:** ![Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e47c2d/32.png) [@Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffy_the_Elephant_Shrew)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2014, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ogden-nash/690794/56 "2014-06-17T22:14:11Z")
> [@vontsira](#): > > Nash seemed decidedly to have a “thing” about dentists – it shows up in a number of his poems. _And if there is one man who I hope his dentist was a sadist and all his teeth were brittle ones, It is he who invented “Chopsticks” for the little ones._ ---
**Author:** ![janis\_and\_c0](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/janis_and_c0/32/21_2.png) [@janis\_and\_c0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/janis_and_c0)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2014, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ogden-nash/690794/57 "2014-06-17T22:44:15Z")
Goody. No one’s posted my favorite yet: Tell me, O Octopus, I begs Is those things arms, or is they legs? I marvel at thee, Octopus If I were thou, I’d call me Us ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2014, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ogden-nash/690794/58 "2014-06-17T23:02:07Z")
From **Very Like a Whale** : \* That’s the kind of thing that’s being done all the time by poets, from Homer to Tennyson; They’re always comparing ladies to lilies and veal to venison, And they always say things like that the snow is a white blanket after a winter storm. Oh it is, is it, all right then, you sleep under a six-inch blanket of snow and I’ll sleep under a half-inch blanket of unpoetical blanket material and we’ll see which one keeps warm, And after that maybe you’ll begin to comprehend dimly What I mean by too much metaphor and simile. \* ---
**Author:** ![txtumbleweed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/278dde/32.png) [@txtumbleweed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/txtumbleweed)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2014, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ogden-nash/690794/59 "2014-06-18T00:38:10Z")
In 11th grade English we had to perform a poem for the class. I liked Ogden Nash so I performed “You’ll Drink Your Orange Juice and Like It, Comrade.” It was rather tricky with all the “s” sounds. Ahem There’s a Cyprus citrus surplus Citrus surplus Cypriotic. No Sicilian citrus surplus But a Cyprus citrus surplus Not a Cyprus citron surplus But a Cyprus citrus surplus Not a Cyprus citrus circus But a Cyprus citrus surplus. It’s a special citrus surplus “Just a surface citrus surfeit,” Says a cryptic Coptic skeptic. [The rest here.](http://archives.newyorker.com/?i=1961-07-08#folio=028) ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2014, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ogden-nash/690794/60 "2014-06-18T01:08:11Z")
I’ve always liked his “A Lady who Thinks she is Thirty”, especially the third verse. “Shining like the morning star, Like the twilight shining, Haunted by a calendar, Miranda is a-pining.” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ogden-nash/690794.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ogden-nash/690794.md?page=4)