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Ogden Nash
1902-1971
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Ogden Nash is buried at
East Side Cemetery, North Hampton, Rockingham County, New Hampshire,
USA.
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Ogden Nash's Gravestone
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Nash was born at Rye, New York - the son of an
import-export company manager. He was educated at St
George's School on Rhode Island and at Harvard -
but he only completed his first year of university before
dropping out. He worked for a while as a teacher, an editor
and an advertising executive before becoming
a freelance writer.
The first of his many
collections of
light
verse, Hard Lines, appeared in 1931. His other
collections included: I'm a Stranger Here Myself
(1938), Many Long Years Ago (1945) and You
Can't Get There from Here (1957).
From
1936-42 he wrote screenplays for Hollywood. He was also a
lyric writer and collaborated with composer Kurt Weill and
librettist S.J. Perelman on One Touch of Venus. He
also produced lyrics for the 1952 revue Two's Company.
After marrying Frances Leonard in 1931 and having children
he started to write poetry for children - a discipline that
he was very successful at. In many ways he was the American
Edward Lear.
He moved to
Baltimore in 1934 and began to follow the Baltimore Colts
who inspired him to write verses which appeared in an
article by Life Magazine in December 1968.
Nash was famous for his ingenious and elaborate rhymes which
often involved neologisms e.g. 'A girl who is
bespectacled/She may not get her nectacled'. He was best known for his short
verses such as 'Candy/Is dandy/But liquor/Is quicker - but he
was equally at home with long poems such as You Bet
Travel is Broadening and Very Like a Whale.
The latter featured some outrageously assymetrical lines such as: 'And they always say things like the snow is
a white blanket after a winter storm./ Oh it it, 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,'. He also wrote
epigrams and other humorous pieces.
He
made frequent guest appearances on radio and he toured the US and England giving lectures at
colleges and universities.
He died from Crohn's
disease at Johns Hospital in Baltimore aged 68.
There
is a biography by Douglas M. Parker which first appeared in
2005.
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A Word
to Husbands
To keep your
marriage brimming
With love in the loving cup,
Whenever you’re wrong, admit it;
Whenever you’re right,
shut up.
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