From Ogden Nash to an Admirer 61 Years Ago

The epitome of dry wit.

Ogden Nash Poem for Eugene McCarthy

Rare find published in the Women for McCarthy newsletter:

Senator McCarthy's birthday was March 29

Happy Birthday, dear Eugene,
The first to give us a choice between.
Today in you we place our trust,
Not an alternative, but a must.
The kids are for you, glory be,
And so are wise old men like me.
How many statesmen of good intent
Would rather be right than president.
But I will gladly take my oath
That you're the man who can be both.
As your 52nd candle burns,
Many happy election returns!

Ogden Nash



Copyright © by Linell Nash Smith and Isabel Nash Eberstadt.

Superstorm Sandy: Ogden Nash on the Rise of the Vandal

Forty-eight years ago Ogden Nash protested how the Halloween tradition of clever 'trick or treat' pranks had regressed into blunt vandalism.  

Those of us in the Northeast would gladly trade toilet papered trees and soaped profanities from past Mischief Nights for the devastation caused by last week's superstorm Sandy. 

If Halloween ever had an innocence, in Nash's view it was rapidly disappearing by 1964.  The pocket knife has morphed into a switchblade in the October Ladies Home Journal illustrations accompanying the poem.

Here are my favorite verses from  Halloween Hoodlums: Go Home:

There is one old hymn that now arouses my curiosity as well as my
   zest,
Which is the one that begins, "For all the saints who from their
   labors rest."
Heaven knows all the saints have earned a good rest after their
   hardships on this earthly scene,
But I wonder how much rest they actually get on the
Eve of All Saints' Day, generally known as Halloween.
Despite nostalgia that increases with age, I don't insist that new
   ways are decadent and only the old ways are fit to venerate,
But I do feel that the celebration of Halloween has tended to
degenerate.
I can remember when children got an adequate thrill from ringing
   doorbells and running away, or rigging ticktacks on the window, or even bobbing for apples,
While they now amuse themselves by upsetting gravestones and
    desecrating chapels.
I try to refrain from crabbedness and contentiousness and general
    fly-off-the-handleism,
But I find it difficult when the young have ceased to distinguish between
    mischief and vandalism.
What has become of the old-fashioned urchin who terrified his cooperative
   relatives with the aid of an old sheet and a lighted
   pumpkin?
He has given way to a savage and malicious breed compounded of country slicker and city bumpkin...


Then, of course, no Halloween would be complete without Trick
   or Treat.
This is a system of extortion that has grown even beyond the
   incredible and the preposterous.
It equals the Mafia in ruthlessness and arrogance, it is altogether
   Cosa Nosterous...

With such thoughts in mind I firmly expect that on some future All
   Saints' Eve all the saints will enjoy undisturbed rest from their
   labors,
And so, I selfishly add, will I and my neighbors.

Copyright © by Linell Nash Smith and Isabel Nash Eberstadt.



The Search for Ogden Nash’s Birthplace

While it’s true that Ogden Nash was born in Rye, NY, proof of exactly where in Rye has long been lost.  Enter mystery novelist Alan Beechey.  When Alan moved to Rye nearly a decade ago, he was pleased to learn that the poet was born there in 1902.  However, he was soon in equal measure dismayed when he learned that there was nothing whatsoever within the Manhattan suburb honoring Nash.  Not a tree to the man who so beautifully satirized Joyce Kilmer’s ’Trees’ in ‘Song of the Open Road.’  Not a dog run to the canophile who wrote dozens of adoring verses about man’s best friend.  Not a playground to the grandfather who penned ‘Reflections on Babies’ and whose animal verses have delighted children worldwide for generations.  Nary a street sign to the wry wit whose first home was in Rye, NY and his last in Rye Beach, NH.

So Alan set his sights on finding where in town the great versifier was born as a proper place for a Nash memoriam.  That’s where the road becomes full of twists and turns that Beechey’s craft had well trained him for.  The poor handwriting and casual errors of census takers and registrars of births and deeds have foiled many a family roots hunter.  Undeterred by such obstacles over a two year period, Beechey, with the support of the Rye Historical Society, has assembled a plausible case for the exact places of Nash’s birth and childhood that forged his humorous literary symmetry.  One of these places receives over a million passersby each week.

In its day Ramaqua, the estate of Ogden Nash’s father, was an Italianate showplace, designed in 1854 by the English architect Gervase Wheeler. In his book, "Homes for the People in Suburb and Country," Wheeler writes "The reader who may chance to have occasion to travel to or from New York by the New Haven railroad may at any time see this villa-mansion from such a point, as it stands upon an eminence that suddenly starts into view just after the train has passed the depot at Rye.”   Records indicate that the Nash’s lived at Ramaqua shortly after the turn of the century.

Patriarch Edmund Nash was a turpentine baron whose business thrived with the US Navy’s need for varnishing their wooden hulled war ships – a franchise which eventually soured with the ascent of ships being launched with hulls of steel.  In fact, had Ogden not been forced to leave Harvard because of the collapse of his father’s company, the delightfully roguish punster may have had the rhyme-ish adventurer formerly schooled out of him.  As it was he returned to teach at St. George’s on Aquidneck Island where he had spent his prep days.  From that springboard he learned how to live by his wit and his pencil, including supporting a family, for the rest of his life.

Ramaqua survived until the 1950’s until it succumbed to what is now America’s legendary Route 95.  Part of the promontory upon which Ramaqua rested is this rocky outcrop in the highway divider. 

Ogden was not born at Ramaqua.  The mystery of where Matilde Nash gave birth to her first son might have been lost to history forever had Alan not asked Linell, Ogden’s daughter, a couple of years ago.  Linell recalled her father’s cousin telling her that ‘Aunt Mattie’ went to the ‘Hicks place’ when her stork was due to arrive. With this anecdote in hand, Beechey found a corroborating entry in the August 1902 "Port Chester Journal" that "A baby boy was born to Mr. and Mrs. E. S. Nash, of the Hicks place.  Unfortunately neither the town’s birth records nor the Episcopal churches baptism record details an address.

Alan located a sizeable estate on a 1900 map owned by ‘Hicks’. This was the home of Colonel William Hix, Thomas Edison's electrical contractor - the spelling was corrected on a subsequent map.  One can imagine Nash and Hix, leading industrialists whose estates were both in Rye, being acquainted in social circles.  What was the Hix estate and most likely Ogden Nash’s place of first breath in this world, is now a gaggle of more modern homes along Hix Avenue.

If you want to see what’s left of Nash’s boyhood home, you’ll have to try to safely glance over where 287 meets 95 and give it a nod.  If you want to visit the likely birthplace of the 20th century’s most popular poet, you can amble along the Hix Road that displaced the Hix mansion.  Perhaps it was these two historical treasures being bulldozed that inspired Nash to quip in 1959: ”Progress might have been all right once, but it has gone on too long.”

In the course of his real life quest, Beechey has no doubt had to channel the hero of his first two novels, Oliver Swithin, a children's book author and amateur detective with a circle of peculiar friends. ( I suppose I’m one of the latter.) You can follow Beechey’s writing and his quest to correct Rye’s Nashional deficit at http://alanbeechey.blogspot.com/

I had the pleasure of meeting Alan at the wonderful Nashional Treasure event he organized at the Rye Arts Center last fall.   A standing room only crowd was delighted by speakers and special guests including Linell Nash, Ogden's daughter and Francis Smith, Nash's grandaughter. The event was written up in the Rye Record and the Sound Shore Review .

As the 110th anniversary of Nash’s birth approaches on August 19th, it would be both comforting and poetic justice to hear that a memorial will someday be established for Nash in Rye.

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.

Ogden Nash’s Tax Reform Proposal

"Solomon said, stay with me apples, for I am sick with l’amour,
But I say, Comfort me with flagons, for I am sick with rich people
talking and acting poor..."

Thus opens This One Is On Me, Ogden Nash's proposal for leveling the economic playing field for the not-so-rich. Nash proposes that the affluent host parties for those who work and pay taxes but have been unable to accumulate wealth. This is only fair considering that the rich “haven’t paid income tax since 1929.”

If you waited until yesterday's deadline to file your taxes, perhaps you did so because you owed money. You may take solace in the full poem from the New Yorker:

Ogden Nash from Mid-Century to Today

Are Ogden Nash's poems relevant in 2010?

Half a century after Ogden Nash’s popularity has peaked it’s fair to ask if Nash’s work maintains any salience to a seemingly vastly transformed world. Nash's celebrity status, earned by the wit of his pen and years of often grueling lecture tours, fostered popularity for his works while he was alive. Recent artistic works and contemporary blogular discourse say a lot about the influence of his work today:

“Does anyone read Ogden Nash any more?” When North-port, MI bookstore owner P.J. Grath was asked this, she replied with arch dignity “Some of us grew up on Ogden Nash, and he is very important to us!” To understand her questioner’s indifference to F.O.N. she later posited that perhaps you had to discover Nash as a child to love his work as an adult. P.J. cites Nash’s “captivating, easily memorized little animal verses” such as the The Pig and The Canary as a reason to be a Nash admirer.

In a recent review of the 2002 ‘Poetry Speaks to Children’ the author claims that it’s the elements of rhyme, rhythm, fun and occasional mischief that makes poetry endearing to children. As Illustration of this we are given Nash's tale of the brave little Isabel, who “didn’t worry, didn’t scream or scurry” when confronted with a ravenous bear, a one-eyed giant or a troublesome doctor. Her clever solutions to problems (“She turned the witch into milk and drank her”)

There's a certain plausibility to the importance of youthful exposure in order to build a life-long affection. On the other hand, in the 1920's and 30's not one of Nash's millions of fans had read him as a child. Can contemporary adults without previous contact find Nash interesting when reading him for the first time?

Grown ups like Natalie Merchant and Neil Gaiman are quite fond of Nash. Gaiman is the best-selling author of the ‘light horror’ book ‘Coraline’ which was later made into an ’09 award winning animated film. In a recent CBS TV interview, he credits Nash for a profound influence on his writing:

“What do you think your attraction to the dark side of things is?"

"I think the thing that crystallized it for me, the moment that I actually understood it for myself, was a quote from Ogden Nash, the great American poet and humorist, where he said, 'Where there's a monster, there's a miracle…And I realized that, for me, is the joy of the monstrous. It's the joy of ghosts, fiction, joy of vampires. It's the miraculous."

Musical artist Natalie Merchant will soon release "Leave Your Sleep" as her first studio music in 7 years. The two disc set adapts poetry from many 19th and 20th century poets such as Ogden Nash and light verse pioneer Edward Lear into song. The album includes an 80-page booklet featuring extensive liner notes by Merchant as well as the original poems.

“Leave Your Sleep is the most elaborate project I have ever completed or even imagined. Nearly seven years ago I set out to create a piece of work I hoped could capture the universal experience of childhood through poetry and music. ”

Delmar, CA author Robert Lundy, transformed his therapeutic interest in Nash into a wellspring for a book and exhibit. Summation 2009-10: The Merging of Art and Poetry” is his book based on an exhibition installed at the Escondido Municipal Art Gallery last December. It contains reproductions of the work of 37 artists and the words of 20 poets.

While enduring the death of his mother and his wife, Lundy rediscovered the therapeutic power of reading and writing poetry.

"I was looking for things to get involved in, and since I'd always liked poetry, I decided to form a poetry club with a friend of mine...I brought along Ogden Nash works and read him, then I started writing my own work." The library based club brought in a poetry director, Williams, to facilitate writing seminars with the group. Due to budget cuts, the library canceled the program after a year, but Lundy and Williams remained friends.

"That's when I really started writing a lot of poetry," Lundy recalled. "Elizabeth would invite me for dinner and say, 'OK, no food until you have written a poem.' It was amazing the number of poems I wrote about food during that time."

Baron Bodissey generally designates Saturday as either his Ranting Day or Poetry Day, depending on his mood and the news of the week, in his blog Gates of Vienna. Having recently having “used up most of my supplies of rant" he decided to "feature light verse while I replenish my stores of invective.”

Bodissey's difficultly in finding his favorite Nash poem, remembered from long ago, inspired him to embark on a quest because Nash’s “most famous examples were very brief eponymous vignettes about animals, but he wrote many other poems which never escaped into fame, and now reside only in dusty old volumes that can be quite difficult to find."

"By the time the internet came along, his aficionados had become so few that many of his lesser-known poems are unavailable on the web. The oeuvre of Ludacris or the philosophical ramblings of Eminem are easy to locate in their entirety, but not the poems of Ogden Nash." But not Boddisey's favorite verse about lawyers.

"I discovered this unfortunate fact last year when I went looking for two of my favorites. They are now obscure, and no amount of googling turned up complete and reliable versions. So I went off to the library the other day and borrowed Verses From 1929 On — which had probably lain untouched on the same shelf since the last time I needed it, fifteen or twenty years ago."

"Finding the poems in question proved a formidable task. None of his books has an index of first lines, and any given title bears only the most tenuous of connections to the poem itself. I had to page through the table of contents four times before I finally found both poems I was looking for."

"The poem below cried out to be posted quickly, because in a year or two — assuming the economic crisis follows its expected course — his stanzas will no longer be funny. By then they will be too true. Here is Ogden Nash ruminating about Professional Men.” He then posts the poem I Yield to My Learned Brother or Is There a Candlestick Maker in the House?

Have you been impacted by the looming tomato shortage? The India's Economic Times alludes to Nash’s ode to catsup as to how the cycle might play out:

“ Thousands of miles away in the US there are burgers, bologneses (sic) and pizzas crying out for a slice of the action. Thanks to a chill in Florida, the supply of fresh tomatoes in the US has got so squished that fast-food chains and restaurants alike have started skimping on the tart vegetable and providing it only on order as prices have trebled. Matters have come to such a pass as 70% of the Florida tomato crop has failed, leaving producers $300 million in the red. Of course, this squeeze — the worst since 1989 — will not last long as harvests from other areas like Mexico and California will soon ketch-up. “ Shake and shake the ketchup bottle/First none will come and then a lot’ll ...?

Can a bookseller, a reporter, a famous musician, a crusader lampooning injustice, a bestselling writer and a niche poet offer a barometer for the salience of Ogden Nash in the 21st Century?

There's no doubt that Nash's poems resonate for many people. Some even celebrate his artistry by creating new works from his poetry. However, many more people have either never discovered his work or have and were unimpressed. Nevertheless, for over 40 years Ogden Nash attained a popularity that was unheard of for a poet in modern times.

Visualizing Ogden Nash's Poems

From Flickr :

A Texas student's reflection...


Hanging at The Bronx Zoo...



Reminder on the workbench...


Xbox commentary...




Poor Mrs. Twist...



A refreshing interpretation of Nash's most quoted poem ...




Shameless commerce in the Netherlands...


A maxim to wear...



They are writing about Llama's in public restrooms in Toronto...



A wedding program reminding the groom to employ silence at strategic intervals...



A Norway artist knew what the caption should be the instant she saw the photo....








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