Ogden Nash

Frederic Ogden Nash (August 19, 1902 – May 19, 1971) was an American poet best known for writing pithy, funny, light verse.

Poetry style

Nash was best known for surprising, pun-like rhymes, as in his retort to Dorothy Parker's dictum, Men seldom make passes/At girls who wear glasses:

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:A girl who is bespectacled

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:She may not get her nectackled

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:But safety pins and bassinets

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:Await the girl who fassinets.

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He often wrote in a signature verse form which creates a comic effect with pairs of lines that rhyme, but that are of dissimilar length and irregular meter. His poem Portrait of the Artist as a Prematurely Old Man uses this device to good effect. He opens by noting

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:It is common knowledge to every schoolboy and even every Bachelor of Arts,

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:That all sin is divided into two parts.

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:One kind of sin is called a sin of commission, and that is very important,

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:And it is what you are doing when you are doing something you ortant...

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He develops this at some length, expounding on the superiority of sins of commission, because

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:You didn't get a wicked forbidden thrill

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:Every time you let a policy lapse or forget to pay a bill;

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:You didn't slap the lads in the tavern on the back and loudly cry Whee,

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:Let's all fail to write just one more letter before we go home, and this round of unwritten letters is on me.

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:No, you never get any fun

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:Out of things you haven't done...

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This verse form is reminiscent of Thomas Hood's 1826 poem, "Our Village."

Related Topics:
Thomas Hood - 1826

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