Poems by Ogden Nash

In three collections of poetry, I'm a Stranger Here Myself, Versus, and You Can't Get There From Here, Nash uses light verse to accomplish the work of insight into certain realities of contemporary human experience. Although Nash's reputation is as an "indefatigable American rhymester" (Atwood 81), it would be misleading to confine his range of concern to diverting humor. For as a matter of fact, the evidence of the poems is that they are meant to oblige the reader to focus on realities that are not always pleasant, but that need not become reasons for despair. In this regard, Hawkins refers to Nash's "funny serious poems," which "coexist[] and interact[] with that angst [of the modern era] . . . recognizing as Mark Twain once said, 'The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow'" (Hawkins 15). Consider for example that I'm a Stranger Here Myself was anthologized in 1938, the between-the-wars period in which so much that was about to go radically wrong with the world was growing in influence. One poem, "Merry Christmas, Nearly Everybody," appears to have been written in 1936: Japan's expansionist imperialism was becoming more ominous; the

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ntends the reader to laugh, as demonstrated by the final couplet, which crafts an adjective out of a pun on Pontius Pilate. The world and humanity would be happier, says the poet, And all our pilots be less Pontius, If people spent more time unconscious (Nash 276). But that same couplet also (as it seems, from the perspective of the air war in World War II) implicitly acknowledges the military implications of the continued wakefulness of the tyrants in question. Essentially, then, "Plea" is a cautionary tale, an exercise in deflating self-important heroism of some even though it calls attention to the dangerous egos of what might be called industrial-strength mischief makers. Versus was printed in 1949, a collection of poetry produced by Nash during and after World War II. "If Anything Should Arise, It Isn't I" is made up of rhymed iambic tetrameter couplets, although unlike "Plea" it is structured as one long poem instead of in separate stanzas. Absent from "Arise" is the social commentary of "Plea." On the other hand, "Arise" is a well-observed comment on the realities of domestic life. The poem begins with the observation that Man "hankers for" the horizontal position of sleep because it allows him to evade responsibility.
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Approximate Word count = 2612
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)

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