The Boy Who Laughed at Santa Claus -- Ogden Nash

Guest poem submitted by Firdaus Janoos :

(Poem #1964) The Boy Who Laughed at Santa Claus In Baltimore there lived a boy. He wasn't anybody's joy. Although his name was Jabez Dawes, His character was full of flaws. In school he never led his classes, He hid old ladies' reading glasses, His mouth was open when he chewed, And elbows to the table glued. He stole the milk of hungry kittens, And walked through doors marked NO ADMITTANCE. He said he acted thus because There wasn't any Santa Claus. Another trick that tickled Jabez Was crying 'Boo' at little babies. He brushed his teeth, they said in town, Sideways instead of up and down. Yet people pardoned every sin, And viewed his antics with a grin, Till they were told by Jabez Dawes, 'There isn't any Santa Claus!' Deploring how he did behave, His parents swiftly sought their grave. They hurried through the portals pearly, And Jabez left the funeral early. Like whooping cough, from child to child, He sped to spread the rumor wild: 'Sure as my name is Jabez Dawes There isn't any Santa Claus!' Slunk like a weasel of a marten Through nursery and kindergarten, Whispering low to every tot, 'There isn't any, no there's not!' The children wept all Christmas eve And Jabez chortled up his sleeve. No infant dared hang up his stocking For fear of Jabez' ribald mocking. He sprawled on his untidy bed, Fresh malice dancing in his head, When presently with scalp-a-tingling, Jabez heard a distant jingling; He heard the crunch of sleigh and hoof Crisply alighting on the roof. What good to rise and bar the door? A shower of soot was on the floor. What was beheld by Jabez Dawes? The fireplace full of Santa Claus! Then Jabez fell upon his knees With cries of 'Don't,' and 'Pretty Please.' He howled, 'I don't know where you read it, But anyhow, I never said it!' 'Jabez' replied the angry saint, 'It isn't I, it's you that ain't. Although there is a Santa Claus, There isn't any Jabez Dawes!' Said Jabez then with impudent vim, 'Oh, yes there is, and I am him! Your magic don't scare me, it doesn't' And suddenly he found he wasn't! From grimy feet to grimy locks, Jabez became a Jack-in-the-box, And ugly toy with springs unsprung, Forever sticking out his tongue. The neighbors heard his mournful squeal; They searched for him, but not with zeal. No trace was found of Jabez Dawes, Which led to thunderous applause, And people drank a loving cup And went and hung their stockings up. All you who sneer at Santa Claus, Beware the fate of Jabez Dawes, The saucy boy who mocked the saint. Donner and Blitzen licked off his paint. -- Ogden Nash

It's a bit too  early for Christmas [not any more it isn't! -- ed.], but
I had to send this one in -- it is one of Nash's real gems. I'll not say
much about it -- a light, witty ditty, showing Ogden Nash's typical
flair for nonsense verse.  I'll let your readers chuckle over its silly
simplicity, without my analyzing or philosophizing over it.

Firdaus.

Reflection on the Fallibility of Nemesis -- Ogden Nash

Guest poem submitted by Zenobia Driver:

(Poem #1881) Reflection on the Fallibility of Nemesis He who is ridden by a conscience Worries about a lot of nonscience; He without benefit of scruples His fun and income soon quadruples. -- Ogden Nash

Found this gem while leafing through a random book on poetry. Who could
but agree, albeit with a rueful grin. You haven't run any Ogden Nash for
a while, how about this one?

Z.

The Hunter -- Ogden Nash

(Poem #1825) The Hunter The hunter crouches in his blind. 'Neath camouflage of every kind. This grown-up man, with luck and pluck, Is hoping to outwit a duck. -- Ogden Nash

Scratch practically any human activity, and you'll find underneath a rich
current of the ridiculous - a fact gleefully exploited by generations of
humorists. And few poets did it better than Nash, with his keen sense of the
humour inherent in language itself - not just the meaning, but the sound and
feel of the words, and the unconscious rules behind grammar, syntax and
etymology. Consider, for example, one of his very finest lines,

  The Cold Crusading for Democracy;
  The Führer of the Streptococcracy.

(from "The Common Cold", Poem #325) - the gleefully coined word
"streptococcracy" lends that extra touch of hilarity to the already funny
image, elevating the whole to the sublimely ridiculous.

Today's poem is nice example of Nash's art and craft, chosen to show that
he can be amusing even without resorting to typically Nashian 'tricks'
like invented words, strained rhymes and comically exaggerated and varied
line lengths[1]. The fish-in-a-barrel shot at the unfortunate breed of duck
hunters and the four-line form (ideally suited to laconic humour, as I've
noted on several occasions) are given that little extra fillip by the bonus
rhyme, making the reader (whether he realises it consciously or not) laugh
at the *sound* of the words as well as their sense. Try substituting "with
skill and pluck" in the third line to see what I mean - the poem immediately
loses a certain indefinable something.

[1] Which is not to denigrate those tricks - they have, in Nash's capable
hands, produced works of rare genius. It's just that people tend to think of
them first and foremost when they think of Nash; I wanted to run a more
'normal' poem to demonstrate that such devices were a technique used by an
already-witty writer, not a crutch to evoke a cheap and easy laugh.

martin

[Links]

Wikipedia on Nash: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogden_Nash

The Tale of Custard the Dragon -- Ogden Nash

Guest poem submitted by Vivian Eden:

(Poem #1672) The Tale of Custard the Dragon Belinda lived in a little white house, With a little black kitten and a little gray mouse, And a little yellow dog and a little red wagon, And a realio, trulio, little pet dragon. Now the name of the little black kitten was Ink, And the little gray mouse, she called her Blink, And the little yellow dog was sharp as Mustard, But the dragon was a coward, and she called him Custard. Custard the dragon had big sharp teeth, And spikes on top of him and scales underneath, Mouth like a fireplace, chimney for a nose, And realio, trulio, daggers on his toes. Belinda was as brave as a barrel full of bears, And Ink and Blink chased lions down the stairs, Mustard was as brave as a tiger in a rage, But Custard cried for a nice safe cage. Belinda tickled him, she tickled him unmerciful, Ink, Blink and Mustard, they rudely called him Percival, They all sat laughing in the little red wagon At the realio, trulio, cowardly dragon. Belinda giggled till she shook the house, And Blink said Week!, which is giggling for a mouse, Ink and Mustard rudely asked his age, When Custard cried for a nice safe cage. Suddenly, suddenly they heard a nasty sound, And Mustard growled, and they all looked around. Meowch! cried Ink, and Ooh! cried Belinda, For there was a pirate, climbing in the winda. Pistol in his left hand, pistol in his right, And he held in his teeth a cutlass bright, His beard was black, one leg was wood; It was clear that the pirate meant no good. Belinda paled, and she cried, Help! Help! But Mustard fled with a terrified yelp, Ink trickled down to the bottom of the household, And little mouse Blink strategically mouseholed. But up jumped Custard, snorting like an engine, Clashed his tail like irons in a dungeon, With a clatter and a clank and a jangling squirm He went at the pirate like a robin at a worm. The pirate gaped at Belinda's dragon, And gulped some grog from his pocket flagon, He fired two bullets but they didn't hit, And Custard gobbled him, every bit. Belinda embraced him, Mustard licked him, No one mourned for his pirate victim Ink and Blink in glee did gyrate Around the dragon that ate the pyrate. Belinda still lives in her little white house, With her little black kitten and her little gray mouse, And her little yellow dog and her little red wagon, And her realio, trulio, little pet dragon. Belinda is as brave as a barrel full of bears, And Ink and Blink chase lions down the stairs, Mustard is as brave as a tiger in a rage, But Custard keeps crying for a nice safe cage. -- Ogden Nash

If the theme is beasts gobbling people, then Custard is essential. I think
chidren love this poem so much because it ends with everything satisfyingly
back to normal after all the excitement and they can fall asleep free of
fears of dragons and pirates, and grownups love it because it is very acute
in its psychology -- Doesn't everyone know people like all the characters in
this poem, including Custard? -- and because it is so much fun to read
aloud. And of course keeping a cowardly pet dragon around is an excellent
way to tame fears and at the same time to get rid of unwanted intruders,
especially if you are a brave little girl like Belinda. As for the poetry,
my favorite lines are: "Ink trickled down to the bottom of the household,  /
And little mouse Blink strategically mouseholed." The verb for Ink is
brilliant, and the rhyme is priceless, with "mouseholed" a wink at the habit
that American English at least has of taking a noun and making a verb of it
-- "to backpack," "to party."

On the Internet, an Ogden Nash site  with good links is at
        http://www.poetrymagazine.com/archives/2001/May01/nash.htm

Vivian.

The Purist -- Ogden Nash

Guest poem submitted by Sandeep Bhadra :

(Poem #1510) The Purist I give you now Professor Twist, A conscientious scientist, Trustees exclaimed, "He never bungles!" And sent him off to distant jungles. Camped on a tropic riverside, One day he missed his loving bride. She had, the guide informed him later, Been eaten by an alligator. Professor Twist could not but smile. "You mean," he said, "a crocodile." -- Ogden Nash

I can see that there are quite a few Ogden Nashes in your collection, but
this particular one is a personal favourite. Unlike his longer rambling
poems, this one captures so much, so humourously and so accurately in so
little. It is a wonder no one thought of suggesting this one for your
anthology.

I can picture an old naturalist-academician in khakis through muddy swamps
in Central America, thoroughly devoted to newts and alligators and other
amphibians, with very little time for his loving bride. I think his almost
mathematical preciseness, even at a time of such utter loss, is not so much
an effect of sang-froid as it is of a habitual inclination to set the other
guy right - I have heard of that being called 'academic arrogance'. It's
pure reflex action for him - and the realisation that old habits die hard
bring out his smile. I should imagine that to be a very wry smile indeed!

The other cool thing is that with the first two lines, the poem is
introduced as an introduction. 'I give you now...' clearly indicates an
appearance on a dias/podium of some sort. What is so darkly funny is that
whoever is introducing Prof. Twist with these words had to chose this
anecdote to prove the professor's conscientiousness.

more on Ogden Nash (bio/poems) at:
 http://www.westegg.com/nash/
http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/nash

regards,
Sandeep.

The Wombat -- Ogden Nash

Guest poem sent in by Wombat

(Poem #1484) The Wombat The wombat lives across the seas, Among the far Antipodes. He may exist on nuts and berries, Or then again, on missionaries; His distant habitat precludes Conclusive knowledge of his moods, But I would not engage the wombat In any form of mortal combat. -- Ogden Nash

    Wombats have a bad press on the internet. Among the geek community we
are known merely as an acronym - a "Waste Of Money, Brains And Time". Only
you can redress the balance by including for the first time in your mailing
list one of the world's classic poems, Ogden Nash's 'Wombat'. I note that
you have not had a silly poem for some time, so this should just about fit
the bill.

Wombat

[Martin adds]

Is it just me, or is there something intrinsically funny about the word
'wombat'?

Polterguest, My Polterguest -- Ogden Nash

Guest poem sent in by atheos

(Poem #1348) Polterguest, My Polterguest I've put Miss Hopper upon the train, And I hope to do so never again, For must I do so, I shouldn't wonder If, instead of upon it, I put her under. Never has host encountered a visitor Less desirable, less exquisiter, Or experienced such a tangy zest In beholding the back of a parting guest. Hoitful-toitful Hecate Hopper Haunted our house and haunted it proper, Hecate Hopper left the property Irredeemably Hecate Hopperty. The morning paper was her monopoly She read it first, and Hecate Hopperly, Handing on to the old subscriber A wad of Dorothy Dix and fiber. Shall we coin a phrase for "to unco-operate"? How about trying "to Hecate Hopperate"? On the maid's days off she found it fun To breakfast in bed at quarter to one. Not only was Hecate on a diet, She insisted that all the family try it, And all one week end we gobbled like pigs On rutabagas and salted figs. She clogged the pipes and she blew the fuses, She broke the rocker that Grandma uses, And she ran amok in the medicine chest, Hecate Hopper, the Polterguest. Hecate Hopper, the Polterguest Left stuff to be posted or expressed, And absconded, her suavity undiminished, With a mystery story I hadn't finished. If I pushed Miss Hopper under the train I'd probably have to do it again, For the time that I pushed her off the boat I regretfully found Miss Hopper could float. -- Ogden Nash

I think there's something about Nash that's irresistible. He just
sweeps you up and away with him.

This one is my absolute favourite. You find yourself in sympathy
with his - even if only in jest - homicidal tendencies. Everybody
has met one of these irritating people. Heck, it could even be
ourselves... Grin.

atheos.

From The Pocket Book of Ogden Nash, with an introduction by Louis
Untermeyer (I personally think Untermeyer gushes too much, but I thought I
should type everything out because it has some rather nice lines
interspersed between the longwinded prose.):

 "There seem to be at least three Ogden Nashes. There are, for
 example: 1. the experimental craftsman 2. the social critic 3. the
 skylarking humourist. Sometimes Nash keeps these three selves
 fairly well segregated. But, more often than not, he lets down the
 bars and allows 1. the innovator, 3. the philosopher, and 3. the
 funny fellow to kick up their heels in happy unison. This volume
 is chiefly given over to the best of those tripartite romps.

 It was Nash in the role of experimental craftsman who first made
 readers aware that something new had happened to light verse in
 America. Accustomed to smoothly paired rhymes and neatly measured
 stanzas, readers were suddenly stopped by the impact of lines
 like:

 I sit in an office at 244 Madison Avenue
 And say to myself you have a responsible job, havenue?

 Cajoled by talk of babies, even parents were startled to find:

 A bit of talcum
 Is always walcum.

 The reader of Nash learned his lessons in a new school; he learned
 of too much affection which:

 .. leads to breaches of promise
 If you go lavishing it around on red hot momise.

 He pondered the theatrical reflection that:

 In the Vanities
 No one wears panities.

 He learned to decipher the weird but comforting axiom that:

 A girl who is bespectacled,
 She may not get her necktacled;
 But safety pins and bassinets
 Await the girl who fassinets.

 Here and elsewhere Nash invents lines that run blithely on without
 benefit of metre and rhymes so madcap as to be irresponsible.
 Instead of pleasing the reader with the customary niceties, Nash
 assaults him with a series of breathless outrages. One or two
 fanatical source-hunters claim to have found the origin of Nash's
 eccentric lines in W.S. Gilbert's "Lost Mr. Blake". But an
 unprejudiced comparison will show that the two styles have little
 in common and that, whereas Gilbert made the experiment just once,
 Nash uses it so freely and so efficiently that he has put his
 trademark upon it.

 So with the rhymes. Nash is the master of surprising words that
 nearly but do-not-quite match, words which rhyme reluctantly,
 words which never before had any relation with each other and
 which will never be on rhyming terms again.
 Here are those apparently improvised monologues in which the
 distortions are more lively - and more quotable - than any
 prepared accuracy.

 What would you do if you were up a dark alley with Caesar Borgia
 And he was coming torgia...

 But the slightly lunatic manner is deceptive. Disguised as a
 buffoon who cannot resist a parody and a pun, there is the social
 critic. Here again Nash has a fresh set of surprises up his ample
 sleeve... Even without his unique bag of technical tricks, Nash
 creates the deftest light verse being written today. The longer
 and more elaborately contrived poems are topical and timely; but
 there is something timeless in the nimble gallantry of "To a Lady
 Passing Time Better Left Unpassed". the whimsical appeal of
 "Complaint to Four Angels", the submerged but not too supressed
 anger of "To a Small Boy Standing on My Shoes While I Am Wearing
 Them", the affable sentiment of "An Introduction To Dogs". and the
 merry malice in what is perhaps the most philosophic and certainly
 the funniest poem in the collection, "The Seven Spritual Ages of
 Mrs. Marmaduke Moore".

 Nash the rhyming clown may win us first, but it is Nash the
 laughing philosopher who holds us longest. Only Nash could have
 combined the tones of banter and burlesque to tell us:

 Our daily diet grows odder and odder-
 It's a wise child that knows its fodder.

 Finally there emerges from this collection a portrait of Nash
 himself, the whole person not quite concealed by the poet. We are
 made aware of his intimate dislikes or (since most of them begin
 with a "p") his prejudices; they include politicians and people's
 names and parsley ("parsley is gharsley") and poems by Edgar A.
 Guest and professors and parties next door. We see him leaping
 about without effort from childlike fancy to mature irony; a crazy
 storyteller one moment, a satirist the next, a wry clown and a
 chuckling critic. It is then that we recognize how rounded the man
 really is, how much more than the haphazard rhymer he reveals. His
 is an inspired method which has just the right measure of madness
 in it, a recklessness that is never without reason. In other and
 flatter words, Nash is our greatest combiner of common sense and
 uncommon nonsense, the undisputed American heir of Edward Lear,
 Lewis Carroll and W. S. Gilbert.

        -- Louis Untermeyer

The Lama -- Ogden Nash

(Poem #1080) The Lama The one-l lama, He's a priest. The two-l llama, He's a beast. And I will bet A silk pajama There isn't any Three-l lllama.* -- Ogden Nash

(to which Nash appended the footnote
  *The author's attention has been called to a type of conflagration known
  as a three-alarmer. Pooh.
)

This is probably Nash's best known poem, and for good reason. Not only does
he provide a wonderfully quotable mnemonic, he goes on to extend it with an
almost Carrollian piece of whimsy, carrying the progression through to its
logical conclusion (why *isn't* there a three-l lllama anyway?). And the
footnote is a delightful piece of icing on the cake, there being something
so Nashian about the pun that I have to wonder whether it was part of the
poem all along.

-martin

[Afterthought]

'llama' would, of course, be pronounced 'yama' in the original Spanish, though
it has been quite thoroughly Anglicised by now.

Very Like a Whale -- Ogden Nash

Guest poem submitted by :

(Poem #854) Very Like a Whale One thing that literature would be greatly the better for Would be a more restricted employment by the authors of simile and metaphor. Authors of all races, be they Greeks, Romans, Teutons or Celts, Can't seem just to say that anything is the thing it is but have to go out of their way to say that it is like something else. What does it mean when we are told That that Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold? In the first place, George Gordon Byron had enough experience To know that it probably wasn't just one Assyrian, it was a lot of Assyrians. However, as too many arguments are apt to induce apoplexy and thus hinder longevity. We'll let it pass as one Assyrian for the sake of brevity. Now then, this particular Assyrian, the one whose cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold, Just what does the poet mean when he says he came down like a wold on the fold? In heaven and earth more than is dreamed of in our philosophy there are great many things. But I don't imagine that among them there is a wolf with purple and gold cohorts or purple and gold anythings. No, no, Lord Byron, before I'll believe that this Assyrian was actually like a wolf I must have some kind of proof; Did he run on all fours and did he have a hairy tail and a big red mouth and big white teeth and did he say Woof Woof? Frankly I think it is very unlikely, and all you were entitled to say, at the very most, Was that the Assyrian cohorts came down like a lot of Assyrian cohorts about to destroy the Hebrew host. But that wasn't fancy enough for Lord Byron, oh dear me no, he had to invent a lot of figures of speech and then interpolate them, With the result that whenever you mention Old Testament soldiers to people they say Oh yes, they're the ones that a lot of wolves dressed up in gold and purple ate them. That's the kind of thing that's being done all the time by poets, from Homer to Tennyson; They're always comparing ladies to lilies and veal to venison, And they always say things like that the snow is a white blanket after a winter storm. Oh it is, is it, all right then, you sleep under a six-inch blanket of snow and I'll sleep under a half-inch blanket of unpoetical blanket material and we'll see which one keeps warm, And after that maybe you'll begin to comprehend dimly What I mean by too much metaphor and simile. -- Ogden Nash

This is one of my favourite poems by Nash, and seems to build on various
threads running through the Minstrels at the moment (large animals (though
alas no hippopotami), nonsense verse etc!). It is the irreligious tone
combined with the air of the ridiculous that is present throughout that
gives this poem its essence for me. Throughout he is attempting to puncture
the balloon of ostentation that poetry sometimes clouds itself in. The
deliberate misquotes combined with the animal noises ("Woof Woof!")!) give
the poem an air of intelligent farce, that I don't feel is overdone.

[Minstrels Links]

The infamous Assyrian poem:
Poem #718, The Destruction of Sennacherib -- George Gordon, Lord Byron

Poems by Ogden Nash:
Poem #402, Portrait of the Artist as a Prematurely Old Man
Poem #542, Will Consider Situation
Poem #625, The Sniffle
Poem #667, Reflections on Ice-Breaking
Poem #848, The Hippopotamus
Poem #325, Common Cold
Poem #353, PG Wooster, Just as he Useter
Poem #388, Kipling's Vermont

The Hippopotamus -- Ogden Nash

I never knew there were so many hippopotamusings in the world...

(Poem #848) The Hippopotamus Behold the hippopotamus! We laugh at how he looks to us, And yet in moments dank and grim, I wonder how we look to him. Peace, peace, thou hippopotamus! We really look all right to us, As you no doubt delight the eye Of other hippopotami. -- Ogden Nash

It's fitting that the last word [1] on hippos should fall to Ogden Nash; the
hippo is nothing if not a Nash creature, an improbability on four legs. And
yet, as the poet points out, we humans must look equally absurd in its eyes:
thin-skinned, anorexic, and always on the verge of falling over...

On a purely technical note, I do think the poem would have been better had
Nash stopped after the first quatrain. The second stanza needlessly
belabours the joke of the first, while not adding much in the way of humour.
Or maybe that's just me.

thomas.

[1] Yes, this really is the last poem in this theme. Really.

[Minstrels Links]

Poem #124, "The Hippopotamus",  Hilaire Belloc
Poem #844, "The Hippopotamus", Oliver Herford
Poem #845, "Recipe for a Hippopotamus Sandwich", Shel Silverstein
Poem #846, "The Hippopotamus", T. S. Eliot
Poem #847, "On the Death of Smet-Smet, the Hippopotamus-Goddess", Rupert
Brooke

[Thanks]

I'm back online after a fortnight spent travelling; my thanks go to Martin
and various guest Minstrels for covering while I was away.

[EndNote]

Hippopotami really is the plural of hippopotamus (though hippopotamuses is
also acceptable).

Reflections on Ice-Breaking -- Ogden Nash

 From the modern-day master of the epigram:

(Poem #667) Reflections on Ice-Breaking Candy Is Dandy But liquor Is quicker. -- Ogden Nash

The _other_ thing about epigrams (which I forgot to mention yesterday) is
that when they're done a-right, further comment is superfluous.

thomas.

[Minstrels Links]

"Common Cold" is a wonderful piece of hypochondriac hyperbole; the source of
that immortal phrase 'The Führer of the Streptococcracy', it's archived at
poem #325. The commentary accompanying the above poem also quotes (in
entirety) several of Nash's better known short pieces, including "The Cobra"
and his "Reflection on a Wicked World".

"P G Wooster, Just as he Useter" is the tribute of one comic genius to
another: poem #353.

while "Kipling's Vermont" is a very different, but equally accomplished
piece of sly satire: poem #388.

"Will Consider Situation", poem #542, showcases Nash's gift for the
long line.

And finally, "The Sniffle", poem #625, is just plain delightful.

[Biography]

 b. Aug. 19, 1902, Rye, N.Y., U.S.
 d. May 19, 1971, Baltimore, Md.

in full FREDERIC OGDEN NASH, American writer of humorous poetry who won a
large following for his audacious verse.

After a year at Harvard University (1920-21), Nash held a variety of
jobs--advertising, teaching, editing, bond selling--before the success of
his poetry enabled him to work full-time at it. He sold his first verse
(1930) to The New Yorker, on whose editorial staff he was employed for a
time. With the publication of his first collection, Hard Lines (1931), he
began a 40-year career during which he produced 20 volumes of verse with
such titles as The Bad Parents' Garden of Verse (1936), I'm a Stranger Here
Myself (1938), and Everyone but Thee and Me (1962). Making his home in
Baltimore, he also did considerable lecturing on tours throughout the United
States. He wrote the lyrics for the musicals One Touch of Venus (1943) and
Two's Company (1952), as well as several children's books.

His rhymes are jarringly off or disconcertingly exact, and his ragged
stanzas vary from lines of one word to lines that meander the length of a
paragraph, often interrupted by inapposite digressions. He said he learned
his prosody from the unintentional blunders of the notoriously slipshod poet
Julia Moore, the "Sweet Singer of Michigan."

        -- EB

The Sniffle -- Ogden Nash

Guest poem submitted by Anustup Datta:

(Poem #625) The Sniffle In spite of her sniffle Isabel's chiffle. Some girls with a sniffle Would be weepy and tiffle; They would look awful, Like a rained-on waffle, But Isabel's chiffle In spite of her sniffle. Her nose is more red With a cold in her head, But then, to be sure, Her eyes are bluer. Some girls with a snuffle, Their tempers are uffle. But when Isabel's snivelly She's snivelly civilly, And when she's snuffly She's perfectly luffly. -- Ogden Nash

There's a nasty little bug going round Bangalore and pretty wisps of lace
and cambric are everywhere ("A handkerchief, my dear, is a tissue that you
don't throw away."). If all the pretty young things sniffling around the
city were laid end-to-end, I (and Dorothy parker) wouldn't be a bit
surprised. This is a dedication to all the colds-in-the-head this flu
season, in Beantown and elsewhere.

Alert Minstrels readers will remember another Ogden Nash gem on the common
cold (Poem no. 325) - this is more whimsical, and even more delightfully,
utterly Nash-esque (Nash-ian? Nash-istic?).

Anustup.

Will Consider Situation -- Ogden Nash

Guest poem submitted by Vikram Doctor, as part of his
guest theme "Poems at Work":

(Poem #542) Will Consider Situation There here are words of radical advice for a young man looking for a job; Young man, be a snob. Yes, if you are in search of arguments against starting at the bottom, Why I've gottem. Let the personnel managers differ; It,s obvious that you will get on faster at the top than at the bottom because there are more people at the bottom than at the top so naturally the competition at the bottom is stiffer. If you need any further proof that my theory works Well, nobody can deny that presidents get paid more than vice-presidents and vice-presidents get paid more than clerks. Stop looking at me quizzically; I want to add that you will never achieve fortune in a job that makes you uncomfortable physically. When anybody tells you that hard jobs are better for you than soft jobs be sure to repeat this text to them, Postmen tramp around all day through rain and snow just to deliver other people's in cozy air-conditioned offices checks to them. You don't need to interpret tea leaves stuck in a cup To understand that people who work sitting down get paid more than people who work standing up. Another thing about having a comfortable job is you not only accommodate more treasure; You get more leisure. So that when you find you have worked so comfortably that your waistline is a menace, You correct it with golf or tennis. Whereas is in an uncomfortable job like piano-moving or stevedoring you indulge, You have no time to exercise, you just continue to bulge. To sum it up, young man, there is every reason to refuse a job that will make heavy demands on you corporally or manually, And the only intelligent way to start your career is to accept a sitting position paying at least twenty-five thousand dollars annually. -- Ogden Nash

A poem that's evidently the theme song of management institutes (and I say that
being a somewhat unlikely MBA myself).

Vikram.

[thomas adds]

Inflation has not been kind to Ogden Nash - now, how many poets can you say
_that_ about? - ... apart from that, though, this is a wonderfully typical piece
of Nashery. Not as good as some of his best work, but delightful nonetheless.

thomas.

Portrait of the Artist as a Prematurely Old Man -- Ogden Nash

(Poem #402) Portrait of the Artist as a Prematurely Old Man It is common knowledge to every schoolboy and even every Bachelor of Arts, That all sin is divided into two parts. One kind of sin is called a sin of commission, and that is very important, And it is what you are doing when you are doing something you ortant, And the other kind of sin is just the opposite and is called a sin of omission and is equally bad in the eyes of all right-thinking people, from Billy Sunday to Buddha, And it consists of not having done something you shuddha. I might as well give you my opinion of these two kinds of sin as long as, in a way, against each other we are pitting them, And that is, don't bother your head about the sins of commission because however sinful, they must at least be fun or else you wouldn't be committing them. It is the sin of omission, the second kind of sin, That lays eggs under your skin. The way you really get painfully bitten Is by the insurance you haven't taken out and the checks you haven't added up the stubs of and the appointments you haven't kept and the bills you haven't paid and the letters you haven't written. Also, about sins of omission there is one particularly painful lack of beauty, Namely, it isn't as though it had been a riotous red-letter day or night every time you neglected to do your duty; You didn't get a wicked forbidden thrill Every time you let a policy lapse or forget to pay a bill; You didn't slap the lads in the tavern on the back and loudly cry Whee, Let's all fail to write just one more letter before we go home, and this round of unwritten letters is on me. No, you never get any fun Out of things you haven't done, But they are the things that I do not like to be amid, Because the suitable things you didn't do give you a lot more trouble than the unsuitable things you did. The moral is that it is probably better not to sin at all, but if some kind of sin you must be pursuing, Well, remember to do it by doing rather than by not doing. -- Ogden Nash

... there's not a whole lot I could profitably say about this poem (except that
(obviously) I like it), so I won't.

thomas.

PS. But I will leave you with this

[Tidbit]

We've been talking of parodies lately, so...

        This is either a fine piece of verse in the true tradition of Nash,
        Or trash.

... written by none other than our very own Martin DeMello. Who'd have thunk it?

Kipling's Vermont -- Ogden Nash

Guest poem submitted by Anustup Datta :

(Poem #388) Kipling's Vermont The summer like a rajah dies, And every widowed tree Kindles for Congregationalist eyes An alien suttee. -- Ogden Nash

A wonderful vignette - almost Imagist in intensity but escaping that label
through its stylisation and sly allusion to Kipling. Appropriately, it is called
"Kipling's Vermont". Notice the satire though in the  congregationalist image,
which reminds me of Kipling's own weltanschaung in Kim -

  Oh those who tread the narrow way
  By Tophet-flare to Judgment Day
  Be gentle when the heathen pray
     To Buddha at Kamakura.

Anustup.

[thomas adds: 'The Buddha at Kamakura' can be read at poem #379]

PG Wooster, Just as he Useter -- Ogden Nash

Guest poem sent in by Suresh Ramasubramanian

(Poem #353) PG Wooster, Just as he Useter Bound to your bookseller, leap to your library, Deluge your dealer with bakshish and bribary, Lean on the counter and never say when, Wodehouse and Wooster are with us again. Flourish the fish-slice, your buttons unloosing, Prepare for the fabulous browsing and sluicing, And quote, til you're known as the neighborhood nuisance, The gems that illumine the browsance and sluicance. Oh, fondle each gem, and after you quote it, Kindly inform me just who wrote it. Which came first, the egg or the rooster? P.G.Wodehouse or Bertram Wooster? I know hawk from handsaw, and Finn from Fiji, But I can't disentangle Bertram from PG. I inquire in the school room, I ask in the road house, Did Wodehouse write Wooster, or Wooster Wodehouse? Bertram Wodehouse and PG Wooster, They are linked in my mind like Simon and Schuster. No matter which fumbled in '41, Or which the woebegone figure of fun. I deduce how the faux pas came about, It was clearly Jeeves's afternoon out. Now Jeeves is back, and my cheeks are crumply From watching him glide through Steeple Bumpleigh. -- Ogden Nash

  NY Herald Tribune 22 May 1946, p 2 (Ogden Nash's book review of
  Joy in the Morning).

  --- review ---

This is a real "Golden trashery of Ogden Nashery" - <Nash's
description of one of his anthologies>.  Nash writes with the
authority of a long time fan of Wodehouse - and one with a sense of
humor best qualified to appreciate Plum's jokes.

Note the use of classic PGW phrases - "browsing and sluicing" for
example.  Also the fact that PGW loves to use obscure quotes from
"The Poet Keats" and the Bible to Gilbert and Sullivan operas in the
most ludicrous context possible.

The last stanza points out that Wodehouse still remains popular,
despite the blasting he received in William "Cassandra" Connor for
his "pro Nazi broadcasts" in 1941.

By the way - PGW became rather a close pal of Connor after this
(even saving his bacon when Evelyn Waugh wanted to roast him in
his famous BBC broadcast in praise of Plum).

Suresh Ramasubramanian | CAUCE India | www.cauce.org|

Common Cold -- Ogden Nash

Guest poem sent in by Anustup Datta

(Poem #325) Common Cold Go hang yourself, you old M.D,! You shall not sneer at me. Pick up your hat and stethoscope, Go wash your mouth with laundry soap; I contemplate a joy exquisite In not paying you for your visit. I did not call you to be told My malady is a common cold. By pounding brow and swollen lip; By fever's hot and scaly grip; By those two red redundant eyes That weep like woeful April skies; By racking snuffle, snort, and sniff; By handkerchief after handkerchief; This cold you wave away as naught Is the damnedest cold man ever caught! Give ear, you scientific fossil! Here is the genuine Cold Colossal; The Cold of which researchers dream, The Perfect Cold, the Cold Supreme. This honored system humbly holds The Super-cold to end all colds; The Cold Crusading for Democracy; The Führer of the Streptococcracy. Bacilli swarm within my portals Such as were ne'er conceived by mortals, But bred by scientists wise and hoary In some Olympic laboratory; Bacteria as large as mice, With feet of fire and heads of ice Who never interrupt for slumber Their stamping elephantine rumba. A common cold, gadzooks, forsooth! Ah, yes. And Lincoln was jostled by Booth; Don Juan was a budding gallant, And Shakespeare's plays show signs of talent; The Arctic winter is fairly coolish, And your diagnosis is fairly foolish. Oh what a derision history holds For the man who belittled the Cold of Colds! -- Ogden Nash

It is with a great sense of disquiet (and some surprise) that I notice that
we haven't yet covered that epitome of comic versification, Ogden Nash. I
will not trouble you with a biography of Nash, for everyone has heard of him
and read his poetry. Indeed, I consider that my first acquaintance with
comic poetry began with his delightful

  The Cobra

  The cobra's mouth is filled with venom,
  He walks upon his duodenum.
  He who attempts to tease a cobra
  Is soon a sadder he, and sobra.

It progressed through the famous and oft-anthologised "Reflections on
Ice-Breaking". His jarringly exact rhymes and biting social satire were only
matched by his delightfully human failings and wonderful whimsicality. His
celebrated brevity is exemplified in the

  Reflection On A Wicked World

  Purity
  Is obscurity.

This is the shortest poem I have ever read - may be the shortest ever
written. But the rapier thrust is ever the keener for that.

'Common Cold' is a longer and more substantial poem about a very mundane
subject. But what Nash does to it is far from common - with splendid
hypochondriac hyperbole, he elevates the everyday cold to Olympian heights.
I especially enjoy the last stanza and its withering humour - P G Wodehouse
couldn't have done it better - and calling his bacterium 'the Fuhrer of the
Streptococcracy' is nothing less than genius. I could go on - but you get
the picture.

Anustup