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By (user no longer on site) OP
over a year ago
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On this day 1971 we lost Ogden Nash, the American poet famous for his short, whimsical verse.
Described by Atlantic Monthly magazine as “God’s Gift to America,” his work ranged from a warning to children: “If called by a panther/Don’t anther” . . . to his ‘Reflections on Ice-Breaking’ for young men wishing to woo:
Candy
Is dandy
But liquor
Is quicker.
And if the ice-breaking was successful and marriage followed, Nash had further advice:
A Word to Husbands:
To keep your marriage brimming
With love in the loving cup,
Whenever you’re wrong, admit it;
Whenever you’re right, shut up.
Frediric Ogden Nash was born in 1902 in New York to a distinguished family. His father ran an import/export business, and the city of Nashville, Tennessee, was named in honour of one of his ancestors.
Nash went to Harvard College but dropped out after only a year, apparently for financial reasons. “I had to drop out to earn a living,” he later wrote. He then took up several jobs, including teaching and copywriting, before joining the publishing house, Doubleday, where he worked as an editor and publicist for six years.
His 1931 debut poetry collection, Hard Lines, was a tremendous success; seven printings of it were sold out in that year alone. His work appeared in many magazines, including The New Yorker, where he joined the editorial staff in 1932.
In the years that followed Nash produced over two dozen volumes of verse, increasingly restricting himself to the whimsical lines that made him famous. The focus was upon what he called “my field – the minor idiocies of humanity.”
But he also wrote screenplays, lyrics, scripts for theatre and essays. Nash also appeared on various radio, game and comedy shows in the 1940s and wrote scores for TV shows in the 1950s.
On top of all that, he went on extensive lecture tours around America and the UK. He took easily to radio and the new mass medium of television, and his regular contributions enhanced his popularity, attracting large audiences both in America and the UK. He continued to write, publish, tour and lecture until close to the end of his life.
In 1934 Nash moved to Baltimore, Maryland, where he lived for the rest of his days. There, he suffered a stroke while being treated in hospital for kidney failure, and died on May the 19th 1971.
He was best known, of course, for his humorous work, but the poem he wrote about old men reflected the sadness that comes with the loss of another friend or family member. It is perhaps appropriate for this day:
Old Men:
People expect old men to die,
They do not really mourn old men.
Old men are different. People look
At them with eyes that wonder when…
People watch with unshocked eyes;
But the old men know when an old man dies.
Some more thoughts of Ogden Nash:
“Children aren't happy with nothing to ignore,
And that's what parents were created for.”
“Some pains are physical, and some pains are mental, but the one that's both is dental.”
“Oh, what a tangled web do parents weave when they think that their children are naive.”
“The cow is of the bovine ilk; one end is moo, the other milk.”
“Senescence begins
And middle-age ends
The day your descendants
Outnumber your friends.” |