Talk:Ogden Nash

old talk
I would love to put a poem of his here but copyright forbids. *sigh* --drj - I see there's a poem of his here, and there's one been added recently to Turtle. Are either of these in the public domain now? I'm guessing "no". --Paul Drye


 * I would have thought they can be quoted under fair use, but I'm no expert. --Sam 20:36, 23 Dec 2003 (UTC)


 * Also one in Wendigo. Nash's first published poetry came out in 1931, so it should all still be under copyright.--Ed Cherlin 4:18, 9 Aug 2005 (UTC)

I removed the quote :But where there's a monster there's a miracle because I can't find reference to it in my Ogden Nash compendium - it certainly isn't famous enough to be listed here. There are some Internet references to the line being said by an "Ogden Ash" but even that seems dubious. - DavidWBrooks 11:57, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * It's from Dragons are Too Seldom, in the collection Many Long Years Ago, published in 1945.--Ed Cherlin 4:26, 9 Aug 2005 (UTC)

I almost removed the long quote from Thomas Hood's 1826 poem, "Our Village," which seems like overkill in an article this size. Any thoughts? - DavidWBrooks 12:15, 9 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Since it's not a very familiar poem, and since it doesn't seem to be available online, I put back a couple of lines... inline, so they look different from Nash's--because I don't think the point is clear without them. Dpbsmith (talk) 19:33, 22 February 2006 (UTC)


 * (Wow: Seven months later, a response! Patience is rewarded on wikipedia) Personally, I think the point is unnecessary unless there is evidence that Nash was influenced by this poem; right now it sounds like a coincidence, possibly irrelevant, that somebody noticed and wanted to mention. - DavidWBrooks 20:34, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

It currently says that he married "Michael Jackson"? - More vandalism? --juliannechat — Preceding unsigned comment added by Juliannechat (talk • contribs) 00:48, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Baha'i?
Someone has added Nash's name to the List of Bah%C3%A1%27%C3%AD_individuals, and added that as a category to this article - but they haven't added any information about that to the article. Does anyone know any more about this? Since Baha'is are non drinkers, and "Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker" is perhaps Nash's best known short poem, I find it... surprising. PaulHammond 19:46, 1 April 2006 (UTC)


 * He's mentioned on Adherents.com as being one. As for "Candy...", we rarely get to choose what others remember us for. -- WikiMarshall 07:23, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

addition
I just removed a very long and unformatted, but well-written and informative, addition from an anonymous IP with no wikipedia history, partly because it repeated already here, but most because it arrived in such form that it looked like something that had been cut-and-pasted from a biography - and a huge edit like that from a complete newbie must, alas, be regarded with suspicion. If I am in error and the IP would like to re-insert it the material, perhaps we could discuss it here and figure out how best to integrate it into the existing article. - DavidWBrooks 23:50, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Footnote after poem "The Lama"
I am doing a report on Ogden Nash. I was reading the article and after the poem the lama, there was a footnote. And it said: "The author's attention has been called to a type of conflagration called a three-alarmer.  Pooh." Is the word "pooh" supposed to be there, and if so why? I am very confused 209.247.5.219 20:44, 7 May 2007 (UTC)Matto-94
 * That's technically known as "vandalism", and is a consequence of the wikipedia policy that "any moron can edit". Wahkeenah 23:04, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
 * No, it's actually what Nash wrote. Think of it as an expression of mild annoyance upon learning that his poem was somewhat inaccurate. - EurekaLott 13:53, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
 * We are too conditioned to look for stuff like that as being vandalism. Wahkeenah 14:25, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks guys; oh, and I did a little more research on the poem, and I found every other website had the word "pooh" after the footnote; so I guess Nash really did write it. Thanks for your help anyway." 209.247.5.219 20:32, 8 May 2007 (UTC)Matto-94

As an r-dropping New Zealander, I'm interested that three-alarmer and three-l lllama are considered close enough to satisfy the American ear as a disproof of Nash's thesis here. Would "alarmer" count as a rhyme for "pyjama" with Americans? It's an exact rhyme for a New Zealander (other than a Southlander or South Otago-ite) and (I'm reasonably sure) most r-dropping British speakers. Is the vowel even the same? I have an idea that American "pyjamas" differs from our "pyjamas" as their "glass" differs from ours. Koro Neil (talk) 16:55, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
 * People born in the Mid-Atlantic and New England regions in Nash's time, particularly middle and upper-class ones, would indeed have dropped the R, as some New Yorkers and Bostoners still do today. Nash was born in New York, raised in Rhode Island, and educated at Harvard-- he would most surely have dropped his R's. The "Standard Midwestern" accent was not nearly as pervasive at the time the poem was written as it is today.--Kajerm (talk) 14:44, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I think it is safe to say that r-dropping has long been familiar enough to speakers of any variety of English for them to be able to accept such rhymes (however grudgingly). Incidentally, the pronunciation of "pyjamas" (or "pajamas," as it is usually spelt in the U.S.) varies in American English.  Particularly in the east, many speakers pronounce it with the "a" of "l(l)ama" rather than with that of "jam." Kostaki mou (talk) 03:27, 24 January 2009 (UTC)
 * There are some videos on YouTube of Nash reading his own poetry. He did indeed drop his R's and quite consistently. Kostaki mou (talk) 22:42, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Yes it is accurate. I have an old collection of Ogden Nash poetry in print (back in the 60s, 70s and the same footnote is there. Anyone who knows Ogden Nash's propensity for satire would recognize this as vintage Nash). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:306:CFE5:E130:A5CD:E36D:B072:2B13 (talk) 09:56, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

Shortest Poem (Guinness)
I understand copyright issues, but surely quoting a few lines here and there is fair use? Some mention should be made of Nash holding the distinction of authoring the shortest poem in the English language, per Guinness. The poem is titled "On the Antiquity of Fleas" and the entire poem reads:

Adam Had 'em

Surely Guinness didn't have to pay Nash's estate royalties to report this fact in their book -- I see no reason why it shouldn't be included in the article.StanislavJ 23:50, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree, including something like that probably wouldn't be an issue. However, I think most of the rest of the article with it's lengthy poem quotations probably needs to be cleaned up. Wikipedia isn't for quotes after all. Stardust8212 00:10, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

I did a massive clean-up, as full poems aren't fair use. Thanks Jaranda wat's sup 19:10, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
 * It looks loads better, well done. Stardust8212 19:53, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

I think that this would be an awesome addition. But I can't find any citations for this? In fact, I see a bunch of people claiming that m is the shortest poem. If he was the record holder in the past I still think it would be worth noting. VoodooEconomics (talk) 18:47, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Breaking the Ice
At some point in the late 60's he added

Pot Is not.

Wikeph (talk) 21:12, 24 May 2008 (UTC)


 * My Dad, who loved Ogden Nash and died within two weeks of him, should be in Guinness instead:


 * Why the Ski Jumper Broke Both Legs


 * No
 * Snow


 * --Hordaland (talk) 22:05, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Vandalized!
It was by a student sorry for the confusion.

Trees - Perhaps, Indeed!
The Joyce Kilmer parody poem is frequently quoted, as it is here:

Perhaps, unless the billboards fall

But my copy of his book The Face Is Familiar (Garden City Publishing, 1941) includes the poem, Song of the Open Road (p. 21) and renders it this way:

"Indeed, unless the billboards fall"

I wrote to Newsweek many years ago about this same misquotation, and received a letter back that "Perhaps, indeed was wrong." --Karen | Talk | contribs 01:43, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Roses
Is the infamous ditty "Roses are red, Violets are blue, Some/Most poems rhyme, This one doesn't" his or not? If so surely it is his "most famous" one, even more so than the lllama one. 66.105.218.28 (talk) 20:12, 26 April 2012 (UTC)


 * I'm quite the Nash fan and I've never heard it, although I've heard similar meta-couplets, so I don't think it's "most famous" by any stretch - DavidWBrooks (talk) 20:19, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Non-free content and original research
As Wikipedia is conservative on its use of non-free content, I have truncated the amount of poetry quoted here. Several poems were quoted in their entirety, for instance. I know Nash wrote short, and it is much harder to excerpt him than it would be an author like T. S. Eliot, but I'm afraid that we have to work within our strictures. We must use small portions of copyrighted content and only as much as is necessary to meet our encyclopedic purpose.

In addition to that, I'll note that quite a lot of this article seems to constitute original research. Our purpose here as a tertiary source is to collect and summarize what reliable sources say about notable subjects, not to analyze them ourselves. :) The entire section on Poetic style and the subsequent section have no sources at all, save for primary sources. How do actual published critics receive Nash? What do they say about his playfulness? This is what we should be talking about, in accordance with our mission. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:51, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

"Death and subsequent events"
Oh, honestly! -the heading reads "Death and subsequent events". While that may display a certain Nashian wit, it's hilariously inappropriate. Death is seldom followed by subsequent events, unless your name is Lazarus or Jesus H. Christ. Can we please come up with something a bit more scholarly for the heading? Bricology (talk) 06:36, 11 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Quasi-standard Wikipedia section name would probably be "legacy", but don't see big problem with current name... AnonMoos (talk) 06:26, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Song for the Saddest Ides
April 15th is not the ides of April, as the article states (in short months, the ides fall on the 13th). Zaxius (talk) 16:06, 7 January 2015 (UTC)


 * When Nash wrote the poem, which seems to have been published in 1941, US income tax returns were due on March 15th, not April 15th. The date was changed to April in 1955. Even at that time it was difficult to determine one's true tax liability in only three months. The Ides of March is indeed the 15th; Nash was precisely correct. Perhaps some day I will correct the article. Or perhaps not. Snezzy (talk) 09:50, 8 June 2016 (UTC)


 * Good point - I've updated the article to reflect it, but I also added a citation-needed note, because I can find no online evidence that the "IRS Chorale" exists or existed. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 17:01, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

Ancestry/Nash Family.
Ogden Nash's ancestors didn't actually "found" Nashville, TN. It is true that Abner Nash's brother Francis is the namesake of that city, which was founded in 1779. Trouble is, Francis Nash died two years earlier, in 1777. You can't establish a city when you're dead.

The article contains a reference to this erroneous claim as well. It's probably a case of family lore being conflated with fact.

Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Nash http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nashville,_Tennessee#History

This link, a source for the History of Nashville page, correctly states that Nashville was established by James Robertson on 25 Dec 1779. 204.93.113.55 (talk) 15:54, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

how many poem did he wrote
And name of the poem Llg80y64 (talk) 16:27, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

I am trying to find a poem of his called.....
I am trying to find a poem of his called "Why it is better to go out and see people than to have people come and see you". The first line is "Because then you can leave when you are through". Can anyone point me to it? Thanks, HandsomeMrToad (talk) 05:16, 30 April 2018 (UTC)


 * The poem is actually called "Suppose I Darken Your Door" and appeared in The Face is Familiar (1941). https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.77757/2015.77757.The-Face-Is-Familiar_djvu.txt MelissaThacker (talk) 15:50, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

Cause of death
This is what the source (NYT obit) says: He had undergone abdominal surgery in March. Last month he developed pneumonia and kidney failure. Mr. Nash was making some progress while receiving treatment with an artificial kidney, but about 10 days ago he suffered a stroke. A hospital spokesman said that the ultimate cause of death was heart failure. For over a decade, this article has said he died of complications from Crohn's disease aggravated by a lactobacillus infection transmitted by improperly prepared coleslaw. A reader tweeted about the long-lived vandalism, noting that many websites have since copied the information. I fixed the wording per the source. Schazjmd  (talk)  00:57, 31 January 2022 (UTC)