Hello All. If you know anything about me you know I love Ogden Nash poetry. Today’s prompt was to be inspired by one of our poetry inspirations. I reference a number of poems in the piece. At the bottom I will put links to all I can find, both Nash and others.
An Ode to Ogden Nash
It started with a Robert Louis Stephenson twin bill.
Oh how I do love the swinging poem still.
And the little shadow who went in and out with me
Is still the way that every shadow I now see
Then AA Milne was added to the mix,
Clever as clever, after all I was six.
I finally joined Frost in the woods, then Angelou,
Billy Collins, Shakespeare and Mary Oliver too
But it was when Ogden Nash came along
That my love of poetry became lifelong.
His verses are almost always in my head
From the early morning until I’m in bed.
His short animal poems were the gateway,
A many varied menagerie he did portray.
It’s where I learned the two ways to spell llama
And how to rhyme it with silk pajama.
His little instructions were readily viewed
As in “celery stewed is more easily chewed”.
Many of his lessons my parents applied
Like “cross children walk, cheerful children ride”.
As each decade flew by I thought I’d grow out him
Then ever few years learned there was more to know him.
His parlor manor poems, as a kid made my eyes roll,
But when reached my forties, they had become so droll.
Don’t think that humor was his only art,
He also wrote with a lot of heart.
Please Pass the Biscuit is a longtime favorite.
If you like dogs at all, I think you will savor it.
Its not just his topics that engaged my mind
But also how the poems were designed.
Clever usage of words, like the stuffy honorarium,
He easily rhymes with the Boston Aquarium
For Nash words were not an impediment
Just something to be mixed with the sediment.
If a word he needed did not exist
He just made one up to get the gist
He wrote 500 pieces which is a treasury
Of observation, humor and the 20th century.
He gave us a slice of the world as he knew it,
Without Google or Rhymezone, how’d he do it?
Robert Louis Stephenson
The Swing. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43166/the-swing-56d221dc6ffc4 My Shadow https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43196/my-shadow
AA Milne
When I was One https://www.scholastic.com/content/dam/teachers/lesson-plans/migrated-files-in-body/grade_pdfs_may_poem.pdf
Robert Frost
On A Snowy Evening. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42891/stopping-by-woods-on-a-snowy-evening
Ogden Nash
The lama. https://compendium.vuduc.org/poem94.html
Celery. https://internetpoem.com/ogden-nash/celery-poem/
I’ll Take the High Road Commission (sorry could not find an easy link)
Please Pass the Biscuit. https://archives.newyorker.com/newyorker/1942-09-19/flipbook/024/
