Very Like a Whale -- Ogden Nash

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(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