NEW IN REVIEW: Light Verse, What Happened to It?

‘Frederic Ogden Nash (August 19, 1902 – May 19, 1971) 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”.

Ogden Nash wrote over 500 pieces of comic verse. The best of his work was published in 14 volumes between 1931 and 1972.

Nash was born in Rye, New York. The 1940 Census lists him as having been born in Seattle. His father owned and operated an import-export company, and because of business obligations, the family relocated often. Nash was descended from the brother of General Francis Nash, who gave his name to Nashville, Tennessee.

His family lived briefly in Savannah, GA in a carriage house owned by Juliette Gordon Low, founder of the Girl Scouts of the USA; he wrote a poem about Mrs. Low’s House. After graduating from St. George’s School in Middletown, Rhode Island, Nash entered Harvard University in 1920, only to drop out a year later. He returned to St. George’s to teach for a year and left to work his way through a series of other jobs, eventually landing a position as an editor at Doubleday publishing house, where he first began to write verse.

Nash moved to Baltimore, Maryland, where lived for most of his life, from 1934 until his death in 1971. Nash thought of Baltimore as home. After his return from a brief move to New York, he wrote “I could have loved New York had I not loved Balti-more.”

His first job in New York was as a writer of the streetcar card ads for a company that previously had employed another Baltimore resident, F. Scott Fitzgerald. Nash loved to rhyme. “I think in terms of rhyme, and have since I was six years old,” he stated in a 1958 news interview. He had a fondness for crafting his own words whenever rhyming words did not exist, though admitting that crafting rhymes was not always the easiest task.

In 1931 he married Frances Leonard. He published his first collection of poems, Hard Lines, that same year, earning him national recognition. Some of his poems reflected an anti-establishment feeling. For example, one verse, titled Common Sense, asks: