Ogden Nash selected

Press, 24 March 1984, Page 20

Ogden Nash selected

I Wouldn’t Have Missed It. Selected Poems of Ogden Nash. Andre Deutsch, 1983. 383 pp. Index. $31.95. (Reviewed by Margaret Quigley) Anthony Burgess, taking time out from his usual weightier concerns, has shown Nash the sincerest form of flattery by writing an introduction to this selection of verse which imitates the style of the original. It begins: “I have never in my life said anything other than laudatory Of the work of Ogden Nash, whose innovations were chiefly auditory, Meaning that he brought a new kind of sound to our literary diversions And didn’t care much about breaking the poetic laws of the Medes and the Persians.” This large and handsome volume gathers together more than 400 poems from the pen of this writer who is probably still one of the few versifiers quoted happily by those who say they “hate poetry.” From 1931 to his death in 1971 he published 14 books of verse and his two daughters have selected what they consider to be the best from all those books to reprint here. Indeed, there is much that is good.

Lots of old familiar favourites, and also many excellent pieces, short and long, which are unfamiliar, but deserve to be well known. Harassed parents of teenagers will be unable to suppress a sympathetic sigh at the concluding couplet of a lengthy poem written to his adolescent daughters which reads: “Still I’d like to be present. I must confess When thine own adolescents adolesce." His daughters have made handsome amends for any grey hairs they caused their father, partly by providing many subjects for his wit, partly by producing this selection of his work. The best of Ogden Nash's work makes us laugh wryly at ourselves and at his perceptive observation of the human condition; the worst is banal and repetitious. A volume like this should only be used to dip into, but one expects to find something worth-while at every dip. Linell Nash Smith and Isabel Nash Eberstadt have erred a little in daughterly devotion and would have served their father’s reputation better by being a bit more ruthless in their selection.