Poetry for Students, Volume 31

Balmer, Josephine, Introduction toSappho: Poems and Fragments, Bloodaxe Books, 1992, pp. 7–25. Castle, Warren, ‘‘Observations on ...

Greek and Roman men thought of the role that women played in men’s lives. Martin, Thomas R.,Ancient Greece: From Prehistoric to ...

The Hippopotamus ‘‘The Hippopotamus’’ offers a prime example of the kind of wit that made Ogden Nash one of America’s most widel ...

Author Biography Ogden Nash was born Frederic Ogden Nash in Rye, New York, on August 19, 1902. He came from a long line of disti ...

animal itself are surprised at the energy with which Nash begins. LINE 2 The second line of the poem is anchored by the author’s ...

tone. Nash does not use any formal language here, and the inclusion of the wordreally; implies that the speaker is talking infor ...

The poem can refer to human pride so cas- ually because it is a concept that is familiar throughout most cultures. In the Wester ...

there is no evidence to indicate that a hippopot- amus would have any aesthetic opinion of human beings’ looks or that one is ev ...

than the syllable before it, producing a ‘‘one- TWO, one-TWO’’ rhythm. Each line is composed of four iambs, which means that the ...

Critical Overview. Ogden Nash’s works have usually been consid- ered a hybrid of two genres, and as a result they are seldom giv ...

artist that hit its nadir during his generation. She declares, ‘‘Nash had appalling luck for a poet: he was happy, prolific, and ...

end of line 8, Nash takes his readers through some interesting terrain. On the way to calming the hippo, to assuring it that the ...

On a slightly deeper level, it is almost inevi- table, psychologically, that a poem so strongly concerned with what its speaker ...

‘dipsomognac’. Burgess’s exercise sticks close to full true rhyming, and his mimicry is best when he is imitating those long ram ...

George W. Crandell In the following essay, Crandell examines the per- sona of the ‘‘poet-fool’’ in Nash’s poems, including ‘‘The ...

Characters like Buhlul, Welsford points out, also appear in English literature, beginning with Beowulf. In this early, English p ...

exposing the absurdity of moral distinctions, and blurring the supposedly clear lines demarcating good and evil. Upon examinatio ...

Incongruous as candy and liquor may be, Nash nevertheless compels us to see both objects as means to an end. Ice-breaking is Nas ...

and a source of delight. But as the deviant one who defies authority and mocks convention, he is the ‘‘bad boy’’ and an object o ...

Source:George W. Crandell, ‘‘Moral Incongruity and Humor: The ‘Good Bad’ Poetry of Ogden Nash,’’ in Studies in American Humor, V ...