The Life and Rhymes of Ogden Nash: A Biography

by David Stuart

Ogden Nash was a rare poet. He celebrated the ordinary with delight and husbands and wives at work, children at play, a society in motion. He studied popular culture with a penetrating eye and wrote about America, its icons, habits, and affectations with humor and levity. He struggled with comparisons to “serious” poets, those heroes of the canon who abandoned the rhyme and meter that Nash found crucial to his style of writing. His witty, insightful, and graceful vignettes captured those moments in life that defy heavy-handed treatment.

Nash did not live out the stereotype of the aloof poet-recluse. In addition to his writing, Nash pursued publishing, screenwriting, and a rigorous lecture circuit. This self-styled poet of wide appeal appeared in newspapers and magazines found in homes across the country, accessible publications such as Life, The New Yorker, Cosmopolitan, SportsIllustrated, Reader’sDigest, and McCall’s. At a time when children’s literature meant Winnie-the-Pooh, Nash produced verses for and about young people that amused, educated, and more important, didn’t pander or lecture. These poems and collections, including Custard the Dragon, The New Nutcracker Suite and Other Innocent Verses, A Boy Is a Boy, and Girls Are Silly, were classics of the genre.

Nash left behind an invaluable body of charming, clever, and utterly unique.

232 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1991

Reviews

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am trying hard not to see this biography as a hagiography that didn't really deal with its subject in a realistic way.

Did Nash truly have no faults, other than a few lovable quirks? We learn in the first few pages of the book that Nash sometimes drank too much, but there is no serious treatment of the subject, and no instances of his actually having drunk too much, other than the occasional reference to a hangover, and the whole idea of his drinking is pawned off as a lovable thing. Maybe it was. But more likely, it wasn't.

And, there is little about Nash's political thoughts, other than dark murmerings that perhaps they at some point became less progressive than in the past. He lived in segregated Baltimore in the 30s and 40s, and lived there off and on through the civil rights movement. During the same time period, he traveled extensively in the segregated South. Did he truly make no observations about civil rights at all, good or bad, other than some vague sense that "they" were moving closer? If not, perhaps that is the most damning thing of all.

[Ann Howell · Rating 4 out of 5]

I went to school with two of his grandchildren and still have one book of his. It is one of my treasures!

[John Arnold · Rating 3 out of 5]

An okay biography which details Ogden Nash's freelance writing---which magazines he was selling to and how much they were paying him, during specific years of his life. What is interesting is that the biography takes you into the book publishing world where Ogden Nash worked for many years before he was able to retire from it and make a lucrative living as a freelance writer. Also talks about his years on the lecture circuit.

[Heather · Rating 2 out of 5]

I feel like this should have been novelized. It was fairly interesting, but so many scenes and anecdotes could have been expanded for more impact.