NASH-ional TREASURE Events in Rye, NY

Disappointed at the lack of recognition that Ogden Nash has been given by his home town, novelist and Rye resident Alan Beechey has led an effort to organize two wonderful events at the Rye Arts Center.

On Saturday, September 17 from 10:00 – 12:00 pm there will be an Ogden Nash literary workshop for ages 8 and older. Participants will explore the words and unique styling of former Rye resident, Ogden Nash, through a variety of projects that incorporate both the literary and visual arts. The first half of this class, attendees will work to create their own poems and verses in Nash’s style. For the second half, they will create an original art piece inspired by their creation. Artwork will be on display during the September Ogden Nash event the following Saturday.

The cost is $30 for non-members. Space is limited. Register at the Rye Arts Center website.

On Sunday, September 25th, there will be a celebration entitled NASH-ional TREASURE at the Rye Arts Center featuring selected readings of some of his most popular poems, along with performances of music from “One Touch of Venus, which Nash wrote. Artwork inspired by Ogden Nash’s poetry, and created by the students of The Rye Arts Center’s art school, will be hung on the walls of the Performing Arts room as an accompaniment to his literary masterpieces.

Alan Beechey, is chairing the event. He will give a brief presentation on the history of Ogden Nash and the legacy that he has left for his hometown of Rye, NY.

Kudos to Mr. Beechey for his efforts to raise awareness and appreciation to Rye’s accomplished native son. He is further advocating creating a permanent memorial to Nash by renaming one of the town’s blandly monikered common areas to Ogden Nash Park. He outlines the case well for doing so in an OpEd in the Rye Record and on MyRye.com. It’s surprising that no place in the world, much less his birthplace, has yes to dedicate a patch of earth to this poet who has brought so much joy to the world. Nash appreciated the individual connections he created with his readers and took time to show his thanks to fan mail with notes like this to Mildred Davis in 1941, who apparently requested an autograph:





This short, silly poem will never appear in a Nash anthology. But you can bet it was treasured by the recipient. It is one of dozens of individual letters to fans that I’ve read where Nash went above and beyond to show his correspondent that he was grateful to them and to make them smile. What star today would take the time today to compose a custom bit of their craft for a fan?

Other than a street in California, the only memorial I’m aware of is the bottom right hand corner of a window in St. Andrews by the Sea in Rye Beach, NH.

It so happens that a friend of mine was in that area last weekend visiting family. He visited Nash’s grave nearby in North Hampton and shared the snapshot below:



Hope you can join the celebration on the 25th and add your voice to effort to rename the Rye park in honor of Ogden Nash!

Immortalizing Heroes of the Gridiron and Diamond

Recognizing Nash's passion for his hometown NFL team, Life Magazine offered Nash the opportunity to showcase his poetry in 'My Colts - Verses and Reverses', their December 13, 1968 cover story.

Nash penned a poem about Bubba Smith, the 6' 7", 280 lb defensive end who passed away last week, ensuring that Smith's legacy will live on:

Bubba Smith

When hearing tales of Bubba Smith
You wonder if he's man or myth.
He's like a hoodoo, like a hex,
He's like Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Few manage to topple in a tussle
Three hundred pounds of hustle and muscle.
He won't complain if double-teamed;
It isn't Bubba who gets creamed.

What gained this pair of underminers?
Only four Forty-niner shiners.


'Verses and Reverses' was as much a tribute to the nation's adoration for Nash as it was to the Colts. How many contemporary poets have ever been featured on the cover of a popular national magazine?

Nash wrote several poems about baseball in his career. As the story goes, when the St. Louis Browns moved to Baltimore in 1953, the versifier composed this poem for a testimonial dinner:























You Can't Kill an Oriole

Wee Willie Keeler
Runs through the town,
All along Charles Street,
In his nightgown.
Belling like a hound dog,
Gathering the pack:
Hey, Wilbert Robinson,
The Orioles are back!
Hey, Hughie Jennings!
Hey, John McGraw!
I got fire in my eye
And tobacco in my jaw!
Hughie, hold my halo.
I'm sick of being a saint:
Got to teach youngsters
To hit 'em where they ain't.












Copyright © by Linell Nash Smith and Isabel Nash Eberstadt.

A Fine Synthetic Brogue

Well over a half century ago, Nash lamented how the St. Patrick' Day celebration, as was happening with Christmas, was overshadowing the higher meaning of the day.

It’s a Grand Parade It Will Be, Modern Design

Saint Patrick was a proper man, a man to be admired;
Of numbering his virtues I am never, never tired.
A handsome man, a holy man, a man of mighty deeds,
He walked the lanes of Erin, a-telling of his beads.
A-telling of his beads, he was, and spreading of the word.
I think that of Saint Patrick’s Day, Saint Patrick hadn't heard.

The saint was born a subject of the ancient British throne,
But the Irish in their wisdom recognized him as their own.
A raiding party captured him, and carried him away,
And Patrick loved the Irish, and he lived to capture they,
A-walking of the valleys and a-spreading of the word.
I think that of Saint Patrick’s Day, Saint Patrick hadn't heard.

He defied the mighty Druids, he spoke them bold and plain,
And he lit the Easter fire on the lofty hill of Shane.
He lit the Easter fire where the hill and heaven met,
And on every hill in Ireland the fire is burning yet.
He lit the Easter fire, a-spreading of the word.
I think that of Saint Patrick’s Day, Saint Patrick hadn't heard.

Saint Patrick was a proper man before he was a saint,
He was shaky in his Latin, his orthography was quaint,
But he walked the length of Ireland, her mountains and her lakes,
A-building of his churches and a-driving out the snakes,
A-building of his churches and a-spreading of the word.
I think that of Saint Patrick’s Day, Saint Patrick hadn't heard.

But the silver-tongued announcer is a coy, facetious rogue;
He ushers in Saint Patrick with a fine synthetic brogue,
He spatters his commercials with macushlas and colleens,
Begorras, worra-worras, and spurious spalpeens.
I hope one day Saint Patrick will lean down from Heaven’s arch
And jam the bloody air waves on the Seventeenth of March.

Ogden Nash


Copyright © by Linell Nash Smith and Isabel Nash Eberstadt.

An Ogden Nash Christmas

December 1st

I remember Yule
(:30 second preview)

December 2nd

Christmas Hash
(Excerpt)

"Tiny reindeer hooves are drumming,
Listen, Santa Clause is coming!
See his tummy bulge and billow!
All her cotton, as she feared...

December 3rd

Poem for the Children's Aid Society of Maryland
(1942)

Christmas is coming, the geese are getting fat.

But how about the children, have you taken thought of that?
What about the little boy that lives down the lane,
Ragged in the snowstorm, whistling in the rain?
What about the little girl the other side of town?
There's no one she can run to, and her world is falling down.
Dead father, drunken father, father gone away,
Sick mother, no mother, think of them today.
These are the lost ones, little ones alone.
These too are Maryland, these are our own.
Christmas is coming, and shall they be dismayed?
Send a Merry Christmas check to the Children's Aid.

Nash was a former President and long time board member of the Children's Aid Society.

December 4th

Nutcracker Suite
(:30 second preview)

December 5th

Scrooge Rides Again
(Excerpt)

Backward, turn backward, O Time, you old ghoul,
Make me a child again just for one Yule;
Reverse, an if please you, the flow of the river,
Let me be a receiver instead of a giver;
Tuck me cozily into a wee trundle bed
As visions of sugarplums dance through my head,
Which would be a superior substitute for
The seasonal nightmare of yore and Dior.
Please provide for this Christmas alternative symbols
To replace Lord and Taylor, and Macy's and Gimbel's;

December 6th

The Three Little Christmas Carols

(Excerpt from The New Yorker 12/22/34)

...And he never pinched any more pennies or skinned any more flints.

So remember, everybody, that you will be gladder but wiser
If you stop being a miser,
And I hope none of us here will have to be haunted by ghosts to remind
us that Christmas is a specially nice time to be alive,
And I wish you all a very merry one, and a very happy 1935.

December 7th

An Untold Adventure of Santa Claus
(:30 second preview)

December 8th

The Miraculous Countdown
(Excerpt)

Faustus shouted with joy hysterical,
And was then struck dumb as he watched a miracle.
He gazed aghast at his handiwork
As every experiment went berserk.
The bacteria, freed from their mother mold,
Settled down to cure the common cold.
Distant islanders sang Hosanna
As nuclear fall-out turned to manna.
Rockets, missiles and satellite
Formed a flaming legend across the night.
From Cape Canaveral clear to the Isthmus
The monsters spelled out Merry Christmas,
Penitent monsters whose fiery breath
Was rich with hope instead of death.
Faustus, the clumsiest of men,
Had butter-fingered a job again.
I've told you his head was far from level;
He thought he had sold his soul to the devil,
When he'd really sold it, for heaven's sake,
To his guardian angel by mistake.
When geniuses all in every nation
Hasten us towards obliteration,
Perhaps it will take the dolts and geese
To drag us backward into peace.

December 9th

Christmas Card

(1959)

December 10th

The Abominable Snowman

I’ve never seen an abominable snowman,
I’m hoping not to see one,
I’m also hoping, if I do,
That it will be a wee one.

December 11th

I'm a Pleasure to Shop For

(:30 second preview)

December 12th

Poem for the Children's Aid Society of Maryland
(1942)

Tonight's December thirty-first

Something is about to burst.
The clock is crouching, dark and small.
Like a time bomb in the wall.
Midnight whistles, loud and clear.
Duck! Here comes another year.

P.S. It's not their fault, but just their luck,
Some children have no place to duck.
That is why this plea is made;
Remember, please, the Children's Aid.

December 13th

December New England Coast
(Excerpt)

...Gloomy and damp the dark sky overhangs,
Mirrored below upon the shifting waves.
Rejoicing as they bare their whitecap fangs
Snapping at every lonely gull who braves
Their dripping jaws upon his wheeling course,
And shrieks disdainful at their measured force...

Written as a student at St. Georges, Middletown, RI

December 14th

Carnival of the Animals

(Excerpt)

INTRODUCTION

Camille Saint-Saens
Was wracked with pains,
When people addressed him,
As Saint-Saens.
He held the human race to blame,
Because it could not pronounce his name,
So, he turned with metronome and fife,
To glorify other kinds of life,
Be quiet please - for here begins
His salute to feathers, fur and fins.

'Carnival of the Animals' is a perennial choice for Christmas concerts. See an interactive exhibit of this work here.

December 15th

The Christmas That Almost Wasn't

(:30 second audio preview)

December 16th

"People can’t concentrate properly on blowing other people to pieces if their minds are poisoned by thoughts suitable to the twenty-fifth of December." ~Ogden Nash

December 17th

The Unpublished Adventures of Santa Claus
(Page 1 of 14 page poem in Family Circle magazine.)

December 18th

Christmas Glass

December 19th

Santa Go Home

(Excerpt)

December 20th

Christmas Card
(1959)

December 21st

I'll eat my Split Level Turkey in the Breezeway
(Excerpt)

A lady I know disapproves of the vulgarization of Christmas; she believes that Christmas should be governed purely by spiritual and romantic laws;
She says all she wants for Christmas is no more suggestive songs about Santa Claus.
Myself, I am more greedy if less cuddle-y.
And being of '02 vintage I am perforce greedy fuddy duddily,
So my own Christmas could be made glad
Less by the donation of anything new than just by the return of a few things I once had.

December 22nd

The Boy who Laughed at Santa Claus (:30 second preview)

Listen to a recent NPR story about this poem here

December 23rd

All's Noel that Ends Noel
Or, Incompatibility is the Spice of Christmas
(Excerpt from The New Yorker 12/14/57)

Do you know Mrs. Millard Fillmore Revere?
On her calendar, Christmas comes three hundred and sixty-five times a year.
Consider Mrs. Revere's Christmas spirit; no one can match it -
No, not Tiny Tim or big Bob Cratchit.
Even on December 26th it reveals no rifts;
She is already compiling her lists of next year's gifts.

December 24th

A Carol for Children
(:30 second audio preview)

First verses:

A Carol for Children
(Excerpt)

Last Verses:

Only the children clasp His hand;
His voice speaks low to them,
And still for them the shining band
Wings over Bethlehem.

God rest you merry, Innocents,
While innocence endures,
A sweeter Christmas than we to ours
May you bequeath to yours.

Christmas

"Merry Christmas Nearly Everybody!" ~ Ogden Nash

All Poems Copyright © by Linell Nash Smith and Isabel Nash Eberstadt

Celebrating With a Few Good Words

Where does a poet go when they die? Do they write new verses in the clouds? Or do they just enjoy watching their old ones take flight?

For the last 39 years Ogden Nash has probably been doing both. On his birthday many took the time to remind Mr. Nash that they adore him. Introducing others to his poetic magic, some artistic souls celebrated the comedy, otherwise known as life, that was Nash's passion:

The Smithsonian Institute's National Portrait Gallery blog shared a portrait of the poet and a review of his work by Warren Perry. If your looking for a more expansive review check out Erin Overby in the New Yorker.

Greenwich Village's Cornelia Street Cafe staged a collaborative musical performance featuring several local artists. The Manhattan neighborhood was no doubt well known to Nash as the New Yorker's original offices were not far.

The venerable North Hampton NH library created an exhibit for their long time summer resident. Several residents stopped in to see Nash family photos and recalled the wonderful parties at the Nash house.

The Baltimore edition of Reading Local gave tribute to their home town poet with a snippet of his summer verse:

From “Pretty Halcyon Days”:

How pleasant to sit on the beach,
On the beach, on the sand, in the sun,
With ocean galore within reach,
And nothing at all to be done!

Ira Tucker remembered Nash's birthday by taking a picture of a North Carolina water lily and captioning it " He without benefit of scruples....His fun and money soon quadruples."

Chicago mystery writer Julia Buckley is especially fond of the 1940 poem "Don't Guess, Let Me Tell You" where Nash satirizes the crime novelists of the "Had I but Known School." She also notes "Nash was always playful, but sometimes in a pessimistic way; he started his poem "A Bas Ben Adhem" with

"My fellow man I do not care for.
I often ask me, What's he there for?"

Robert Merkin traveled from MA to Ontario to see "A Touch of Venus" at the Shaw Festival. The show runs through October 10th. He shared these thoughts which seem to illustrate that Nash knew much about romance in the human race he continually lampooned:

"It's a dirty, off-color, naughty little show -- Perelman wrote Marx Brothers' movies, and Broadway had no Hayes Office to censor or restrain him -- just one jalapeño after another, a string of cheap Macau firecrackers. The mechanics and equipment of actual human reproduction are often clearly referred to in Nash's lyrics and the dialogue. (The barber Venus falls in love with has a Murphy bed, and as it magically descends to the floor, she enthusiastically approves.)

I can't describe the thrill of hearing "Speak Low" sung and harmonized, Venus and Brooklyn barber, in its intended setting and Weill's original orchestration. The orchestra gave it a driving bass vamp -- a bit of a tango beat -- which subsequent jazz covers ignore, but it works on the Broadway stage circa 1943.

The whole thing is a French farce, with the wrong people ducking in and out of windows and closet doors and hiding under the Murphy bed -- well, it has the manic panic of a Marx Brothers movie, a pretty funny one at that. Much of its look and flavor and feel is from the same factory that cranked out "Guys and Dolls." The dances were by Agnes DeMille, straight from "Oklahoma!" -- so it's punctuated with Dream Dances to advance and illuminate the real-life narrative.

As you'd expect from re-animating a statue of Venus, the whole show is about Romantic Love, and it's wholeheartedly in favor of it, mess, pain, torment, grief and all.

Poor foolish heart
Crying for one who ignores you
Poor foolish heart
Flying from one who adores you

After the barber impulsively puts his fiancee's engagement ring on the statue's finger, and then rejects the goddess' advances, she laments to the audience

You see here before you

a woman with a mission

I must discover

the key to his ignition

and if he should make

a diplomatic proposition

how could I possibly refuse?

when I'm a stranger here myself

Well, look -- I just had the damnedest time. I've loved these songs for maybe a half-century, and I finally got to see them in their Delivery Room.

Of Nash -- well, you win, it's Genius by a Knockout, his poems are a perfect marriage of fun, jokes, puns, wit, syncopation -- and True Romance. You got to hum Weill's tunes as you leave the theater, and Nash's lyrics just make these exquisite, sometimes ethereal melodies burst into gorgeous, funny, beautiful flowers."

On Nash's birthday lyrics burst into flowers and water lily's became verse.

Ogden Nash on Parent - Kid Relations

In honor of Ogden Nash's 108th birthaversary, here is the non-rhyming, yet very funny introduction to Parents Keep Out. Subtitled 'Elderly Poems for Youngerly Readers. A 49 year old Nash writes how delighted he is to discover that kids can relate to his poems - the ones written about the foibles of the adult world. Nash muses that perhaps the way to bridge the great inter-generational communication divide is for parents to laugh at themselves in front of their children.

FOREWORD

Since parents can't keep out of anything, I resignedly

address these words to them. Many parents will find that

they have read some of the verses in previous books of

mine. I shall not apologize. Anybody who has read previous

books of mine is a trespasser in this one, which has been

compiled for a younger generation. I do not regard it as a

children's book, however; I simply hope it is a book that

anyone born less than fourteen or fifteen years ago may

enjoy. I have written a lot of verses about children, but

they are of no interest to children, as they were written for

parents; on the other hand I have been pleased to discover

that some of the pieces dealing with the aberrations

and anomalies of the adult world have found favor here

and there among the kids. This makes me very proud;

indeed at such times I feel like the cryptographer who has

cracked the code, or the first man to reach the moon,

because, in my experience, full communication between the

generations simply doesn't exist. There is a curtain between

the mind of the child and the mind of the parent

as opaque as any between the mind of the Occidental and

the mind of the Russian or the Chinese. Words may be

interchanged, but they do not mean the same thing to one

as to the other; the language is purely diplomatic - or

undiplomatic - and the final understanding

is about equal to that achieved by diplomats.

Of course it may be that if the kids do

like any of these verses it is for the very reason that

the Kremlin is gratified by any sign of the collapse of

capitalism; watchful young eyes may here perceive indications

of the breakup of the old people's world. Nevertheless,

flushed by a few minor successes among my juniors, I have

risked hastening the revolution by gathering for them from

my past this potpourri of foolish jokes, anecdotes, fables,

and other trivia, embellished with rhymes and conclusions

both true and false. Perhaps for the very reason that this

particular collection is not calculated, dear parents who

have not kept out, to present us as the omniscient and

infallible paragons they think we think we are, it may

persuade our young to treat us more gently when they

take over. God willing, it may even persuade a

disreputable handful that they are as silly as we.

O. N.

Copyright © by Linell Nash Smith and Isabel Nash Eberstadt.

Pondering The Jellyfish

My son just returned from surfing camp in Florida. He brought back stories of encounters with dolphins and Portuguese Man o' Wars. As well as a few garden variety jellyfish stings on his toes.

I showed him and my other two little ones Nash's 'The Jellyfish' and asked them if they could memorize the seven word poem. Predictably my oldest finished first. However, their varied interpretations on the poem's meaning were unexpected.

The Jellyfish

Who wants my jellyfish?
I'm not sellyfish!

I thought this was just a simple summer ode to a one dimensional creature. However, my 11 year old recited it back "I'm not shellyfish" A reading which surprisingly borders on making sense zoologically.

My 7 year old interpreted 'sellyfish' as I did: a play on 'selfish'. As in: 'Out of altruism I bequeath you this stinging blob.'

My wife perceived that Nash meant he would not venture to 'sell-yfish' his jellyfish for financial gain.

While my four year maintained his silence with a far away gaze. Perhaps he was dreaming about peanut butter and jellyfish sandwiches.