Ogden Nash: Difference between revisions

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{{quote| ''Candy is dandy,''<br />
''[[But Liquor Is Quicker]].'' }}
|"Reflections on Ice-Breaking" }}
 
[[Ogden Nash]] (1902-1971) was one of the great writers of American humorous poetry, noted for couplets or other poems that rhyme, but [[Painful Rhyme|the lines are of different length and irregular meter]]. He lived in Baltimore most of his life, and included several paeans to it in his work. Also noted are his series of poems set to Camille Saint-Saens' "Carnival Of The Animals".
 
He was also verified by the ''[[Guinness World Records|Guinness Book Of World Records]]'' as having composed the shortest published poem: ''"On the Antiquity of Fleas''", which consists of merely "Adam/Had'em."
 
== Tropes in Ogden Nash's work: ==
 
{{creatortropes}}
* [[Analogy Backfire]]: The poem ''The Romantic Age'', about a lovestruck teenage girl who:
{{quote| Presses lips and tosses head, <br />
Declares she's not too young to wed. <br />
Informs you pertly you forget <br />
Romeo and Juliet. <br />
Do not argue, do not shout; <br />
Remind her how that one turned out. }}
* [[But Liquor Is Quicker]]: "Reflections on Ice-Breaking" is the [[Trope Namer]].
* [[Ceiling Banger]]:
{{quote| We might love the people upstairs wonderous<br />
If, instead of above us, they lived just underus. }}
* [[Least Rhymable Word]]:
{{quote| There are no rhymes for orange or silver,<br />
Unless liberties you pilfer. }}
* [[Little Did I Know]]: ''Don't Guess, Let Me Tell You''.
* [[Long Title]]: Relative to the poems they're assigned to, an often inescapable consequence of the brevity of his wit; at other times an example of his wit by themselves. Among them "On the Antiquity of Fleas", which is three times as long as the poem itself, and "To A Small Boy Standing On My Shoes While I Am Wearing Them".
* [[Missing Floor]]: ''A Tale of the Thirteenth Floor''.
* [[Painful Rhyme]]: Though done deliberately, and often lampshaded by changes in the spelling.
* [[Romantic Hyperbole]]:
{{quote| More than a catbird hates a cat, <br />
Or a criminal hates a clue, <br />
Or the Axis hates the United States, <br />
That's how much I love you.... }}
* [[Spoiled Brat]]: The subject of "To A Small Boy Standing On My Shoes While I Am Wearing Them", at least in the eyes of the narrator.
* [[Spotlight-Stealing Title]]:
{{quote| ''The Self-Effacement of Electra Thorne'':<br />
As for egocentricity, good heavens! <br />
What's egocentric about wanting the marquee to read<br />
ELECTRA THORNE<br />
IN<br />
OPHELIA AND HAMLET<br />
WITH<br />
MAURICE EVANS<br />
? }}
* [[Stuffy Old Songs About the Buttocks]]: ''The Clean Platter''
{{quote| Some singers sing of ladies' eyes <br />
And some of ladies' lips, <br />
Refined ones praise their ladylike ways, <br />
And coarse ones hymn their hips. }}
* [[Termite Trouble]]/[[Floorboard Failure]]: ''The Termite''
{{quote| Some primal termite knocked on wood<br />
Tasted it, and found it good<br />
And that is why your Cousin May<br />
Fell through the parlor floor today. }}
* [[The So-Called Coward]]: ''Custard the Dragon'' is about a woman named Belinda who lived with a kitten, a mouse, a dog, and a dragon. Counter-intuitively, the kitten, mouse, and dog were all described as being very brave, while the dragon was a coward. However, when a pirate broke into the house and threatened Belinda, the three supposedly '"brave'" animals ran and hid, and Custard stood his ground, fought the pirate, and ate him.
* [[The Thing That Would Not Leave]]: ''Polterguest, My Polterguest''[https://web.archive.org/web/20180127035958/http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~keith/poems/polterguest.html\ ''Polterguest, My Polterguest''].
* [[Wendigo]]:
{{quote| The Wendigo, the Wendigo <br />
I saw it just a friend ago <br />
Last night it lurked in Canada <br />
Tonight on your veranda! }}
 
{{reflist}}
[[Category:PoetryPoets]]
[[Category:The Forties]]
[[Category:Authors]]
[[Category:Ogden Nash]]
[[Category:TropePages with working Wikipedia tabs]]