Ogden Nash was born Frederick Ogden
Nash on August 19, 1902 in Rye, New York. He was raised there in Rye
and in Savannah, Georgia. He was educated at St. George's School in
Rhode Island and following that, briefly at Harvard University. In
1925 he started work writing advertising copy for Doubleday in New
York and then published his first book for children that same year:
The Cricket of Caradon.
His first published poem Spring Comes to Murray
Hill appeared in New Yorker magazine in 1930. He joined the
staff at New Yorker in 1932, and married Frances Rider Leonard
the following year. He published 19 books of poetry, and collaborated
on the musical comedy, "One Touch of Venus" in 1943.
Of his writing, Nash says, "...my field -- the minor
idiocies of humanity". So On His Children in First Child...Second
Child he remarks, "
Be it a girl, or one of the boys,
It is scarlet all over its avoirdupois,
It is red, it is boiled; could the obstetrician
Have possibly been a lobstertrician?
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Nash's haphazard measures, impossible rhymes, and
somewhat crazy manner was a delight to his readers. He is the
predecessor of Dr. Seuss' also zany sense and nonsense. The Face Is
Familiar became known as THE GOLDEN TRASHERY OF OGDEN NASHERY, and
holds some of the brightest gems.
The wasp and all his numerous family
I look upon as a major calamity.
He throws open his nest with prodigality,
But I distrust his waspitality.
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Ogden Nash was elected to the National Institute of
Arts and Letters in 1950. Although he lived in New York, his principle
home was Baltimore, Maryland, where he died on May 19, 1971. He was
buried in North Hampton, New Hampshire..
See his selected poems at:
http://www.aenet.org/poems/ognash2.htm , also see:
from
Amazon , and on the WEB:
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