Ogden Nash

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Lore & Background

Frederic Ogden Nash was born on August 19, 1902, in Rye, New York, on Milton Point, the son of Mattie (Chenault) and Edmund Strudwick Nash. His family often relocated due to business obligations. He graduated from St. George's School in Newport County, Rhode Island, entered Harvard University in 1920, and dropped out a year later. He taught at St. George's for one year, then sold bonds in New York—reportedly quipping, 'Came to New York to make my fortune as a bond salesman and in two years sold one bond—to my godmother. However, I saw lots of good movies.' He later worked as a writer of streetcar card ads for Barron Collier and as an editor at Doubleday. In 1931, he submitted short rhymes to The New Yorker; editor Harold Ross wrote to ask for more, calling them 'the most original stuff we have had lately.' That same year, Nash published his first collection, *Hard Lines*, earning national recognition. He married Frances Leonard of Baltimore in 1931, and in 1934 moved to his in-laws' mansion in Guilford, Baltimore, where he remained until his death. Nash died at Johns Hopkins Hospital on May 19, 1971, of Crohn's disease.

Reader's Guide

Ogden Nash's significance lies in his mastery of light verse, a form he elevated through inventive wordplay and irregular meter. His poems were frequently anthologized even in serious collections such as Selden Rodman's 1946 *A New Anthology of Modern Poetry*. Nash's unconventional rhyming—misspelling words or combining them for comic effect—became his trademark, as seen in his retort to Dorothy Parker's dictum about glasses: 'A girl who is bespectacled / She may not get her nectacled.' He also wrote lyrics for the 1943 Broadway musical *One Touch of Venus* (with S. J. Perelman and Kurt Weill) and the 1952 revue *Two's Company*. His love of the Baltimore Colts was featured in the December 13, 1968, issue of *Life* magazine, with several poems about the team matched to full-page pictures. Nash wrote humorous poems for each movement of Camille Saint-Saëns's *The Carnival of the Animals*, sometimes recited when the work is performed. The US Postal Service released a postage stamp featuring Nash and text from six of his poems on the centennial of his birth, August 19, 2002.

Did You Know?

• Nash wrote more than 500 pieces of light verse.
• He sold only one bond as a bond salesman—to his godmother—and quipped about it.
• His poem 'Line-Up for Yesterday' was an alphabetical tribute to baseball immortals published in *Sport* magazine in January 1949.
• Nash wrote humorous poems for each movement of Camille Saint-Saëns's *The Carnival of the Animals*, with a 1940s recording featuring Noël Coward reciting.
• The US Postal Service issued a stamp honoring Nash on the centennial of his birth, August 19, 2002, featuring text from six of his poems.