Books like The Best of Ogden Nash

I knew little about Ogden Nash when this book came within my reach at my local what-not and wild book tables warehouse. I knew only that he wrote light verse in the early part of the 20th Century and that he was considered declasse in the world of poetry. From this I apparently had built some assumptions. First that he was more of a humorist than a poet or a word person. Second that since he didn't reach for profound topics or write "serious" poetry that he was not erudite. I was utterly wrong on both accounts. He is absolutely a word person, a language person. He has a very keen ear and part of the reason I enjoyed him is because I am faced with how different words in English are in spelling and pronunciation practically every day that I teach. He is playful with language, with rhyme, in a way that frequently highlights how a word would be spelled if we spelled it the way we (or some of us anyway) say it. He also has a pretty wild vocabulary that introduced me to some words I've never seen before (and I'm not talking about ones he's made up or altered for fun). And he was clearly both very educated, evident all over by poetic lines or titles from predecessors and bending them to his purpose. and of a curious and critical mind. Though the results might make us groan or chuckle (I laughed outright on more than one occasion and had to put the book down), it's hard to deny that it takes a gifted mind to flip both situations and language as he does in many of his poems. There's a flexibility that's easy to admire.This particular collection was edited by one of his daughters and has been criticized by some as not preening enough and by others as not containing some of his best. The only place where the experience entirely fell flat for me was a section containing verse and songs intended for use in musicals. As for his focus on the more quotidian aspects of life, I've found that they result in his poetry having an enduring quality. We still stand in lines. We may not have as many cocktail parties as was popular during his time, but discomfort around parties remains, as does annoyances with neighbors and dealing with money and children and spouses and other shoppers. To my surprise, there's quite a bit of social/cultural criticism among his poetry. He often wonders why human beings do things one way instead of another. So his work may not reach for profound heights but it definitely addresses the human condition, both generally and as we experience it on a day to day basis dealing with our minds, our bodies, and other people.As for his sense of poetic form, end rhyme is his only master. I suspect this is why he is frowned on by the literary establishment. I found it interesting that The Poetry Foundation website had quite a long article about Nash but not a single poem to click on. Since I don't want to make the same mistake. Let me give you some examples of his style.As an example of playfulness of all kinds, here are the last two lines of the poem, "Two Goes Into Two Once, If You Can Get It There."I am baffled, I weave between Scylla and Charybdis, between a writ of replevin and a tort;I shall console myself with the reflection that even in this world, ever perverse and ever shifting, two pints still make one cavort.Here are the last 4 lines of a dissection of the unpleasantness of picnics called "You Have Got to Be Mr. Pickwick If You Want to Enjoy a Picnic."There is the inland picnic where you start to tickle and discover that every tickle is a tick.And the beach picnic where the host didn't realize that the tide would come in so quick.I always say there is only one kind of picnic where it doesn't matter if you have forgotten the salt and the bottle-opener, and the kids want to go to the bathroom, and the thunder-clouds swell and billow like funeral drapery,And that is where the meal is cooked in the kitchen and served on the dining room table, which is covered with snowy, un-papery napery.It's easy to see how this would give those who believe in the tightness of poetic language a nosebleed. However, I would argue that form follows function in some of his poems in that when lines get out of control, they are usually expressing frustration or a feeling of being out of control. Are his lines musical, even as Whitman can be musical? No. His ear is for individual words, not lines. Nash is either sing-song or without music. The ear I mentioned earlier is only for individual words and the natural way that people talk.A lot of his poetry has a tone of complaint and he clearly has a love of being contrary. On poem is dedicated to countering the popularity of "Happiness Is . . . " statements by providing "Unhappiness Is . . . " statements.It is when you finally manage to fit both your check and that computer slotted slat into the envelope with the window slit provided by your utility cartel, and it is at best an awkward fit,And you stamp it and seal it only to find that you have to rip it open again because the wrong side of the slotted slat is facing the slit.And if you can't relate to that little bit, what about this from "May I Drive You Home, Mrs. Murgatroyd?"Here's a statement that anybody who feels so inclined to is welcome to make a hearty meal of:People who possess operator's licenses ought never to ride in a car that anybody else is at the wheel of.It seems to be their point of viewThat you are some kind of fanatic bent on murdering or mutilating them even in the face of the certainty that in so doing you must murder or mutilate yourself too.They are always jumping and wincing and jamming their feet down on an imaginary brake,Or making noises as if they had just discovered that their bed was inhabited by a snake,Or else they start a casual conversation that begins with remarks about the weather and other banalities,And leads up to a pointed comment on the horrifying number of annual automobile fatalities.They tell you not only about cars that actually are coming but also cars that might be coming, and they do it so kindly and gentlyThat it's obvious they consider you deaf and blind as well as rather deficient mently.And when at last you somehow manage to get to where you've been going to they say thank you in a voice full of plaster of Paris and bitter aloes,And get down out of the car as if they were getting down off the gallows,And they walk away with the Is-it-really-over expression of a lot of rescued survivorsI'm glad to say that at the end of 438 pages of non-stop Ogden Nash, I'm not as put out as Mrs. Murgatroyd. I'm glad I took the trip and I found myself wishing that we had an Ogden Nash for our times. Yes we have some brilliant television comedians who deliver humorous, pointed monologues. However, not many of them are likely refer to Scylla and Charybdis or describe clouds that "swell and billow like funeral drapery." In other words, it's not poetry. However, I can think of few people I would recommend this book to. It is a lot of Nash, for one thing. I wouldn't call him one-dimensional. The poems span lots of situations and subjects. But not everyone has a big enough appetite for light verse, word play and laughing at the little annoyances of life. You have to enjoy amused groaning at his often twisted acrobatics to get his signature end rhyme. You have to have a tolerance for frantic wordiness. I could easily argue that Nash was an artist, a poet, of his time expressing the experience of life and thus is a descendant of Whitman. I think he has been to thoroughly swept under the rug, disregarded. I hope someone eventually picks him up and does an examination of his place. But it won't be me. What's left for me to decide is whether to keep this book or to pass it on for others to discover and chuckle. I'm having a hard time deciding.