What happened to Ogden Nash?
Last night I went to Barnes & Noble looking for a book of poems to buy for the son of a friend. Some of my fonder literary recollections from childhood are verses of Ogden Nash, so I figured that was a promising route.
I went to the poetry section, but no Nash was to be found. Then I strolled over to the humor section and ditto. So I went to the Customer Service counter and asked if the store had any of his books in stock. The girl said she’d never heard of him, and I said, “Well, you know some of rhymes, I’m sure,” and then delivered one:
A panther is like a leopard
except it hasn’t been peppered
should you behold a panther crouch
prepare to say ouch
better yet, if called by a panther
don’t anther.
She checked the computer and nothing was in stock. I finally did find six or seven of his rhymes in a compilation book for kids, which I purchased. But the whole thing left me dissatisfied. There was, for instance, a book called “Poems of Emily Dickinson for Children”. Excuse me? Why not just bring in Sylvia Plath while we’re at it, or teach Ethan Frome to kindergarteners?
Nash was best known for silly verses but was well thought of by the literary community during his lifetime. His work has aged well and is very readable - I can’t imagine why he isn’t more popular today than seems to be.
Filed under: Ejecta
All very true, and all very sad. But within the past ten years, I found a couple of Nash’s children’s poems in the children’s section. One of them concerned an aardvark no Noah’s Ark.