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The Private Dining-room and Other Verses
Vintage book
169 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1953
2 people are currently reading
37 people want to read
About the author
Ogden Nash
234 books195 followersFrederic Ogden Nash was an American poet well known for his light verse. At the time of his death in 1971, the New York Times said his "droll verse with its unconventional rhymes made him the country's best-known producer of humorous poetry".
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
June 4, 2012
Meet my new love, Ogden Nash.
A master craftsman of the letters, he twists and spins words into playful rhymes, even making up new ones for comic effect:
THE LEPIDOPTERIST
The lepidopterist with happy cries
Devotes his days to hunting butterflies.
The leopard, through some feline mental twist,
Would rather hunt a lepidopterist.
That's why I never adopted lepidoptery;
I do not wish to live in jeopardoptery.
And this bit from
PEEKABOO, I ALMOST SEE YOU
...and he says one set of glasses won't do.
You need two.
One for reading Erle Stanley Gardner's Perry Mason
and Keat's "Endymion" with,
And the other for walking around without saying Hello
to strange wymion with.
Speaking of wymion, I mean women...Nash loved to rhapsodize about their mysteries:
From FATHER-IN-LAW OF THE GROOM
For years I saw no male but me;
Even our Bedlington was a she.
I stood apart and watched agog
My wife, my daughter, and my dog.
They are a higher form of life,
My dog, my daughter, and my wife,
Inhabitants of a fourth dimension
Too mystic for my comprehension.
And from IT'S ABOUT TIME
How simple was the relationship between the sexes in
the days of Francesca di Rimini;
Men were menacing, women were womeny.
When confronted with women, men weren't expected
to understand them;
Their alternatives were, if rejected, to un-hand, if ac-
cepted, to hand them.
Oh, these are priceless! It's tempting to copy all my favorites...but I'll just pick two more.
THE HAMSTER
There is not much about the hamster
To stimulate the epigramster.
The essence of his simple story,
He populates the laboratory.
Then leaves his offspring in the lurch,
Martyrs to medical research.
Was he as bright as people am,
New York would be New Hamsterdam.
THE CLUB CAR
Come, child, while rambling through the nation
Let's practice our pronunciation.
The liquid confluence here we see.
Of r-i-b and a-l-d.
When first potato chips he nibbled,
That gentleman was merely ribald,
But now that he is four-rye-highballed,
We may properly pronounce him ribald.
A master craftsman of the letters, he twists and spins words into playful rhymes, even making up new ones for comic effect:
THE LEPIDOPTERIST
The lepidopterist with happy cries
Devotes his days to hunting butterflies.
The leopard, through some feline mental twist,
Would rather hunt a lepidopterist.
That's why I never adopted lepidoptery;
I do not wish to live in jeopardoptery.
And this bit from
PEEKABOO, I ALMOST SEE YOU
...and he says one set of glasses won't do.
You need two.
One for reading Erle Stanley Gardner's Perry Mason
and Keat's "Endymion" with,
And the other for walking around without saying Hello
to strange wymion with.
Speaking of wymion, I mean women...Nash loved to rhapsodize about their mysteries:
From FATHER-IN-LAW OF THE GROOM
For years I saw no male but me;
Even our Bedlington was a she.
I stood apart and watched agog
My wife, my daughter, and my dog.
They are a higher form of life,
My dog, my daughter, and my wife,
Inhabitants of a fourth dimension
Too mystic for my comprehension.
And from IT'S ABOUT TIME
How simple was the relationship between the sexes in
the days of Francesca di Rimini;
Men were menacing, women were womeny.
When confronted with women, men weren't expected
to understand them;
Their alternatives were, if rejected, to un-hand, if ac-
cepted, to hand them.
Oh, these are priceless! It's tempting to copy all my favorites...but I'll just pick two more.
THE HAMSTER
There is not much about the hamster
To stimulate the epigramster.
The essence of his simple story,
He populates the laboratory.
Then leaves his offspring in the lurch,
Martyrs to medical research.
Was he as bright as people am,
New York would be New Hamsterdam.
THE CLUB CAR
Come, child, while rambling through the nation
Let's practice our pronunciation.
The liquid confluence here we see.
Of r-i-b and a-l-d.
When first potato chips he nibbled,
That gentleman was merely ribald,
But now that he is four-rye-highballed,
We may properly pronounce him ribald.
November 8, 2025
Nowhere near his best work.
February 25, 2022
I have always loved Ogden Nash, but reading select poems from this collection aloud to my 3-year-old daughter brought me a new level of enjoyment. She delighted in his wordplay and, unsurprisingly, loved his animal poems.
November 19, 2020
This was Nash's seventh collection (or thereabouts) and about midway in his national publishing career. This is the second reading for me, but I don't know precisely when I read it before.
I'm a fan of Nash's work, but one must admit that these periodic collections of his have both winners and groaners, and some of them that are specific satires haven't aged well. However, this contains several of his better animal poems ("The Mules" "The Cuckoo" "The Caterpillar") and his "Limerick One" of minor fame.
My least favorite oh his efforts are those that labor for forty or fifty lines to turn on a bad pun at the end.
But Nash is the author of those pillars of Western Literature, "The Termite" and "The Llama", not to mention "The Camel" and "The Panther". What more can be expected of any poet???
I'm a fan of Nash's work, but one must admit that these periodic collections of his have both winners and groaners, and some of them that are specific satires haven't aged well. However, this contains several of his better animal poems ("The Mules" "The Cuckoo" "The Caterpillar") and his "Limerick One" of minor fame.
My least favorite oh his efforts are those that labor for forty or fifty lines to turn on a bad pun at the end.
But Nash is the author of those pillars of Western Literature, "The Termite" and "The Llama", not to mention "The Camel" and "The Panther". What more can be expected of any poet???
June 18, 2017
A most entertaining read! One of my mother's very old books.
December 6, 2019
Hilarious poetry collection from 1952. I laughed so much.
March 19, 2025
Light verse by its master. Freaking brilliant as usual.
July 19, 2015
Charmingly eccentric. Nash can be repetitiously cynical at times, but "Don't Look For the Silver Lining, Just Wait For It" (on pgs 33-34) is a perfect poem to lift one's spirits above the economic gloom (and worse) which we face today.
September 6, 2016
Nash was himself and none other. Some of these poems have to be read aloud!
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews