Moyers and Lithgow on Ogden Nash

"...One of the reasons why I love Nash is, to the extent I write poetry at all, I write daffy doggerel for little children. But Ogden Nash is kind of my patron saint. " Said John Lithgow on a recent episode of Bill Moyers Journal .

Moyers also wonders aloud what it would be like to have Nash and Shakespeare together:

BILL MOYERS: I've often-I've wondered sometimes if Shakespeare might, where ever the great poets gather, be sitting on a corner with Ogden Nash. Comparing their almost mischievous view of life that reflects itself in different...(Lithgow cuts him off )

Clearly Moyers holds Nash in high regard.

While Lithgow reveres Shakespeare, surprisingly he characterizes Nash's work as 'doggerel'. and presumptively places himself on par with Nash as a poet. Me thinks the actor doth presume too much. Lithgow closes the Nash segment with a garrulous interpretation of "No Doctors Today, Thank You."

"They tell me that euphoria is the feeling of feeling wonderful, well,
today, I feel euphorian,
Today I have the agility of a Greek god and the appetite of a Victorian.
Yes, today I may even go forth without my galoshes,
Today, I am a swashbuckler, would anybody like me to buckle any
swashes?
This is my euphorian day,
I will ring welkins and before anybody answers I will run away.
I will tame me a caribou
And bedeck it with marabou.
I will pen me my memoirs.
Ah youth, youth! What euphorian days them was!
I wasn't much of a hand for the boudoirs,
I was generally to be found where the food was.
Does anybody want any flotsam?
I've gotsam.
Does anybody want any jetsam?
I can getsam.
I can play chopsticks on the Wurlitzer,
I can speak Portuguese like a Berlitzer.
I can don or doff my shoes without tying or untying the laces because I
am wearing moccasins,
And I practically know the difference between serums and antitoccasins.
Kind people, don't think me purse-proud, don't set me down as
vainglorious,
I'm just a little euphorious."

Copyright © by Linell Nash Smith and Isabel Nash Eberstadt.

BILL MOYERS: Oh, I love that. Euphorious. A word without meaning, but which is invested with feeling. You get it, even if you don't get it, right?
JOHN LITHGOW: Yeah. He just loved music. He loved to almost caricature language.

You can watch the entire episode and read the transcript here . The poem is read at about the 15 minute mark of the second half of the video.

Timeless Threads of Ogden Nash

Here's an eclectic smörgåsbord of recent Nash news and blog bytes:

"I claim there ain't
Another Saint
As great as Valentine."

The City of Akron used this Nash quip to advise that Judge Stubbs-Williams would be open Saturday, Feb 14 for those wishing to tie the knot. The litigation weary Judge noted that "I don’t mind opening our court on a weekend. It’s so rare we get to deal with anything joyous"

The world's most famous matchmaker received somewhat harsher treatment in 270 when he was beheaded by the Romans.









Another Nashian Valentine was noted by Debby from the Germany-Holland border:

"To My Valentine"

More than a catbird hates a cat,
Or a criminal hates a clue,
Or the Axis hates the United States
That's how much I love you...
Read the rest here


Moving on to the puzzlesphere, two readers of Rex Parker's NY Times Crossword blog credit their long term memory of Ogden Nash's AXOLOTL for solving the January 30th puzzle. Many cite Nash's works as the best remembered from the classroom. "I've never met an Axolotl, but Harvard has one in a bottle " certainly has a mnemonic quality.

Similarly, AnnaMaria De Mars of Santa Monica remembered that she once created a poetry writing computer program based on Nash's The Hippopotamus. Dr. De Mars has "achieved success in business, sports and academics without ever actually having grown up". Or as Nash observed:

Film student Nimisha Saikia of Ahmedabad shared Nash's 'A Word on Wind' as one of her favorites...

Cows go around saying Moo,
But the wind goes around saying Woo,
Ghosts say Woooo to you too,
And sometimes they say boo to you too,
But everybody has heard the wind but a few people have heard the ghost,
So it is commonly supposed the wind says wooo the most....
Read the rest here

The Sante Fe New Mexican and other pubs noted the recently departed John Updike's connections to Nash as New Yorker contributor and, in his early years, light versifier.

The Ukiah Daily Journal featured a column on popular culture being interwoven into California Supreme Court opinions. It noted that a Nash poem was part of the court's rationale in a 1980 opinion. It doesn't say which poem. Ogden Nash lags Bob Dylan who has been cited for support in 22 bench rulings.

Nash's lyrics are frequently brought to life in Saint-Saens' 'Carnival of the Animals'. But it's a rare to find a detailed review like San Bernardino Symphony Delights Children at Family Concert :

" Especially delightful, Edoardo Ponti's sassy reading of the Ogden Nash verses in Carnival gave spark to the work, and pianists Nancy Bricard and Juliane Song expressed everything from a lion's roar to a hopping kangaroo to a sliding fish... Saint-Saens' "Le Carnaval Des Animaux" (The Carnival of the Animals), although eschewed by the composer during his lifetime, further illuminated serious music and the colors and characteristics of the instruments... In the most familiar of the pieces, "The Swan" in Carnival, principal cello Ana Maria Maldonado delivered a particularly sensuous, poignant picture of a lovely swan gliding silently over the smooth water."

Sounds like it was a beautiful rendering of the verses. 'Carnival' was also performed recently at the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art in New York.


"Hope is dope." is the lead quote in suburban Chicago's Daily Herald article on the U.S. fiscal crisis. The writer cites this ten letter Nash poem as one of the English language's shortest. Could there be a published poem less than ten letters long?

In his influential blog JP Rangaswami of the UK included Blogden among good examples of putting your passion on the web.

All of the above threads woven into contemporary life are a testament to the poet's enduring relevance.

Ogden Nash poems copyright © by Linell Nash Smith and Isabel Nash Eberstadt

Interview with Ogden Nash Biographer

A transcript of the 2005 PBS interview with Douglas Parker about Ogden Nash can be found here. Parker's discussion with ThinkTank's Ben Wattenberg provides a nice oral history of the stories behind many of Nash's most famous poems. These include his first published poem, about the self-righteous and hypocritical Senator Smoot.


Invocation
(SMOOT PLANS TARIFF BAN ON IMPROPER BOOKS )

Senator Smoot (Republican, Ut.)

Is planning a ban on smut.

Oh rooti-ti-toot for Smoot of Ut.

And his reverend occiput.

Smite, Smoot, smite for Ut.,

Grit your molars and do your dut.,

Gird up your l__ns,

Smite h_p and th_gh,

We'll all be Kansas

By and by...


...Senator Smoot is an institute

Not to be bribed with pelf;

He guards our homes from erotic tomes

By reading them all himself.

Read the full poem here

Ogden Nash poems copyright © by Linell Nash Smith and Isabel Nash Eberstadt

Origins of the Banking Crisis

Pundits routinely trace the roots of the financial system's current tailspin to the sub-prime mortgage boom of the past several years.

Ogden Nash foresaw elements of this crisis germinating over a half century ago. Bankers were a favorite Nash target. In a 1956 issue of the New Yorker, Nash lampooned the banking industry for transforming themselves from sage pillars of savings into financial hucksters.

Business Day in Australia's entitles it's article bemoaning the growth of financial derivatives, with the first two lines of Nash's poem 'Anybody for Money? Or Just Bring Your Own Basket'

Consider the banker
He was once a financial anchor...

Nash goes on to sternly admonish bankers for acting like car salesman, before concluding with:

In Nash's eyes bankers transformed themselves from cornerstones of financial common sense to "behaving so provocatively robbable." As the credit card lending crisis begins to share headlines with the mortgage crisis, we are reminded that Main Street's bank branches were the storefronts for Wall Steet's back rooms: Places where the high velocity, mind blurring complexity of the financial derivatives and securitization market melted into the toxic asset dump that Kate Jennings derides in Business Day.

There has long been a cyclical, good times, bad times pattern in banking: The 90% stock margin lending of the roaring 20's followed by the credit drought of the 1930's. The real estate boom of the 1980's and the ensuing S&L crisis.

As banking's cultural pendulum swings back to prudence, Nash, the former bond salesman, deserves credit for his prescient parody that, like so much of his work, used humor to gain attention for his genuine concern for society's wellbeing.

Ogden Nash poems copyright © by Linell Nash Smith and Isabel Nash Eberstadt

Ogden Nash: Obama Advisor

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue's newest resident has received much advice. He's acted swiftly on Nash's chief recommendations: "If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog" and “Dogs are upright as a steeple, And much more loyal than people.”

According to Examiner.com the Obamas have been to the pound but the choice "has been tougher than finding a commerce secretary." Front runners are the Labradoodle and Portuguese Water Dog.

Presumably the Secret Service will be managing Nash's quip that "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of."

Ogden Nash poems copyright © by Linell Nash Smith and Isabel Nash Eberstadt

Ogden Nash 's Dogs

In his twenties, Ogden Nash was a restless advertising copywriter who eventually struck out on his own. Yet his craft continued to display a knack for penning phrases that resonated and became part of the American lexicon.

"A dog is man's best friend" is one that continues to resonate. Nash's views on dogs have had a long lasting impact on others.

According to WTHR, Indianapolis, Ogden Nash was the first to characterize a dog as "man's best friend." It is in fact the first line of "An Introduction to Dogs". Annie Hillard, the Solitary Walker, shares her story of long term affinity with this poem in a recent post. Liesel's Garden Party features a fine picture collage to accompany these verses.

Nash wrote a lot about dogs, I won't try to capture all the verses here, but here are some lesser known ones first published in the New Yorker:

January 08, 1949

For a Good Dog
My little dog ten years ago…

August 21, 1948

Two dogs have I
For years we've had a little dog…

September 19, 1942

Please pass the biscuit
I have a little dog…

October 22, 1949
Poetry

Love me but Leave my Dog Alone
Once there was a handsome man named Mr. Beamington and he…

July 21, 1951

Roll Over And Play Alive Or, Who Says You Can't Teach An Old Dog Tiresome Old Tricks
Brooks are often called rippling, but rivers are really…

October 12, 1957

Fellow-Creatures, Tray and Outre
The truth I do not stretch or shove…

Ogden Nash poems copyright © by Linell Nash Smith and Isabel Nash Eberstadt

More than Twelve Days of Christmas

In an effort to stimulate the 1939 economy FDR extended the Christmas shopping season a full week by moving Thanksgiving to the third Thursday of November. As recently noted by the National Archives , the Crossville, TN Chronicle and Jennifer Howard in D.C., Ogden Nash basted Roosevelt for his judgment:

Thanksgiving, like Ambassadors,
Cabinet officers and
others smeared with political ointment,
Depends for its existence on
Presidential appointment.

- Ogden Nash

Most Americans agreed and Turkey Day was restored to the last Thursday in 1942.


Ogden Nash poems copyright © by Linell Nash Smith and Isabel Nash Eberstadt