Ogden Nash

[vontsira]

@kaylasdad99

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. *

One which I love ! For an end-of-year English exam at my school, this offering was printed out in its entirety; with an invitation given to the pupils to defend old-fashioned serious poets, with arguments as to why their doings with figures of speech, were not so silly as Ogden made them out to be.

[Dervorin]

@Captain_Amazing

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.”

The few “serious” poems he has have somehow stayed with me as being much more insightful and deep than his funny ones. This one is definitely one of them. Really quite moving.

[Dangerosa]

As for teaching Ogden Nash, his poems are often used in elementary school as a exposure to poetry and poetry styles - they are short, simple in form, easy to understand (usually) and funny - far more accessible to a third grader than Yeats. (along with Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll). But at that age, you often don’t know the author of what you are read or really retain it - it might seem familiar if you hear it years later. And it seems that the idea at that age is simply to give them some exposure - not to study poetry.

(In middle school, go for Stephen Crane - all that middle school angsty stuff, overwrought imagery that hits you with a brick - but what we like to teach in America is Frost and Dickenson and Angelou or Hughes for diversity. Me, I’m an e e cummings girl.).

[TruCelt]

Just last weekend I was talking with some friends about the central theme of our lives to date. I chose Ogden Nash’s poem:

I could use some nice dull monotony;
If you’ve gottony.

[Clothahump]

My favorite has always been A Tale of the Thirteenth Floor.