
Ogden Nash
Date of Birth | : | 19 Aug, 1902 |
Date of Death | : | 19 May, 1971 |
Place of Birth | : | Rye, New York, United States |
Profession | : | Poet |
Nationality | : | American |
Frederic Ogden Nash was an American poet well known for his light verse, of which he wrote over 500 pieces. With his unconventional rhyming schemes, he was declared by The New York Times the country's best-known producer of humorous poetry.
Biography
After a year at Harvard University (1920–21), Nash held a variety of jobs—advertising, teaching, editing, bond selling—before the success of his poetry enabled him to work full-time at it. He sold his first verse (1930) to The New Yorker, on whose editorial staff he was employed for a time. With the publication of his first collection, Hard Lines (1931), he began a 40-year career during which he produced 20 volumes of verse with such titles as The Bad Parents’ Garden of Verse (1936), I’m a Stranger Here Myself (1938), and Everyone but Thee and Me (1962). Making his home in Baltimore, he also did considerable lecturing on tours throughout the United States. He wrote the lyrics for the musicals One Touch of Venus (1943) and Two’s Company (1952), as well as several children’s books.
His rhymes are jarringly off or disconcertingly exact, and his ragged stanzas vary from lines of one word to lines that meander the length of a paragraph, often interrupted by inapposite digressions. He said he learned his prosody from the unintentional blunders of the notoriously slipshod poet Julia Moore, the “Sweet Singer of Michigan.”
Quotes
I believe that people believe what they believe they believe.
So I hope husbands and wives will continue to debate and combat Over everything debatable and combatable Because I believe a little incompatibility is the spice of life Particularly if he has income and she is pattable.
The camel has a single hump, The dromedary, two; Or else the other way around; I'm never sure. Are you?
Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker.
Time is like the ocean, always there, always different.
When grandparents enter the door, discipline flies out the window.
There has been a lot of progress during my lifetime, but I'm afraid it's heading in the wrong direction.
I think that I shall never see A billboard lovely as a tree. Perhaps, unless the billboards fall, I'll never see a tree at all.
Abracadabra, thus we learn The more you create, the less you earn. The less you earn, the more you're given, The less you lead, the more you're driven, The more destroyed, the more they feed, The more you pay, the more they need, The more you earn, the less you keep, And now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to take If the tax-collector hasn't got it before I wake.
Tonight's December thirty-first, something is about to burst. The clock is crouching, dark and small, like a time bomb in the hall. Hark, it's midnight, children dear. Duck! Here comes another year!