Nash, Ogden (redirected from Ogden Nash)

Nash, Ogden, 1902–71, American poet, b. Rye, N.Y., studied at Harvard. He was popular for a wide assortment of witty and immensely quotable doggerel verses, ranging from urbane satire to absurdity in their subject and rhyme. For several decades his work appeared regularly in The New Yorker magazine. Nash also wrote plays, e.g., One Touch of Venus (1943) in collaboration with Kurt Weill and S. J. Perelman, and children's books. His collections include Hard Lines (1931), I'm a Stranger Here Myself (1938), Selected Verse (1946), Versus (1949), The Private Dining Room (1953), You Can't Get There from Here (1957), Verses from 1929 On (1959), Everyone but Thee and Me (1962), and Bed Riddance (1970).

Bibliography

See biography by D. M. Parker (2005).

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Nash, (Frederic) Ogden

(born Aug. 19, 1902, Rye, N.Y., U.S.—died May 19, 1971, Baltimore, Md.) U.S. writer of humorous poetry. Nash sold his first verse in 1930 to The New Yorker, on whose staff he worked. In 1931 he published Hard Lines, the first of 20 collections that include The Bad Parents' Garden of Verse (1936), I'm a Stranger Here Myself (1938), and Everyone but Thee and Me (1962). His audacious, quotable verse employs delightfully impossible rhymes, puns, and ragged stanzas, often interrupted by digressions. He wrote several children's books and the lyrics for the musicals One Touch of Venus (1943) and Two's Company (1952).

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Nash, (Frediric) Ogden (1902–71) poet, writer; born in Rye, N.Y. He studied at Harvard (1920–21), taught briefly, and was a bond salesman in New York (1924). After he got a job in publishing, he began to contribute his humorous poems to magazines including the New Yorker, whose editorial staff he joined in 1932. He soon became known as one of America's most sophisticated as well as popular poets. His poetry's ingenious rhymes and witty juxtapositions soon gained him a reputation with both sophisticates and the general public. In addition to plays and prose pieces, he collaborated with S. J. Perelman on the libretto for the musical One Touch of Venus (1943) and the inimitable verses for a recording of Saint-Saëns "Carnival of the Animals."