Man’s Little Disturbances

Starting out, I promised myself that I would not begin my review of The Best of Ogden Nash until I had read each and every one of the “548 Favorite Poems from America’s Laureate of Light Verse” (as the dust jacket boasts), but at page 350 I succumbed. Mind you, I had been reading the poems, a few each day, for months and had even been making brief notes (which I stopped doing at page 195 with a reference to Heming-way); but, when I read through the selection of lyrics the poet had written for various musicals, I had an idea. The lyrics were thin, lacking the shameless daring and relentless verve of his verse written for the New Yorker. In this regard I find myself in agreement with the TLS editor who said recently that the lyrics of “Speak Low,” perhaps Nash’s most enduring contribution to what is sometimes called the American Songbook, “don’t stand much scrutiny.” Certainly even Nash enthusiasts would agree that Nash was not a particularly distinctive lyricist, failing to achieve the heights even when setting words to Kurt Weil’s music.

The question arises: what is it about the songs that separate them from the best poems (and there are almost too many of those to count)? My hunch is that what is missing in the songs is Nash, the poet whose ego put him at the forefront of almost all his poetry. There is nothing “Nashional,” to borrow a word coined by the poet, about the songs. One marker of that sine qua non which is missing in the songs is the outrageously delightful rhyme, often brought about by some lexical creation. The songs, obviously intended to appeal to a different crowd than the readers of the magazines to which Nash long contributed, are characterized often by true full rhymes—something utterly alien to Nashional poetics—all too predictable. Of course, what so often “sells” a Nash poem is the reader’s expectation all along that the poet will surprise, and the surprise will delight. And this is telling, I think: the reader expects, consciously or not, that it is the poet who will surprise, not the free-standing poem.

Each of his poems is a typical Nash performance. He stands over the poem and takes credit for its effects. He is, in the main, the most egotistical of poets, never content to lose himself in a poem, letting the poem be a living thing in itself. This is one reason he can indulge himself by adding line after line to poems that have already (sometimes brilliantly) made a telling observation or point, lines that are just other ways to say the same thing but show off the poet’s verbal ingenuity and metrical skills. But Nash writes light verse, it will be said in defense of his practice. Touché.

I am incorrigible, so I will also submit that the Nashional poet tells us, in his inimitable way (try writing a Nashional poem), that in our bourgeois (and sometimes existential) ills, blues, and depression, we are not alone. Mithradites, he died old, it is said, because he took a little poison every day. Consider Nash’s poems less like poison, but placebos intended to protect us from big poisonous thoughts. In this respect he seldom let his guard down, though there are exceptions. Take “Old Men,” for example: “People expect old men to die, / They do not really mourn old men. / Old men are different. People look / At them with eyes that wonder when . . . / People watch with unshocked eyes; / But the old men know when an old man dies.” This, too, is a Nashional poem, and it, together with a handful of other serious poems that do not play for laughs, needs to be factored in when we see Ogden Nash whole.