Critical Overview.
Ogden Nash’s works have usually been consid-
ered a hybrid of two genres, and as a result
they are seldom given serious consideration
between the two. At the time that his works
were being published in theNew Yorker,Nash
was considered a humorist and a celebrity; he was
known as a poet, but, like the many others that he
associated with, including James Thurber, Rob-
ert Benchley, and S. J. Perelman, with whom
he collaborated on a Broadway musical in the
1940s, Nash was more often quoted than read.
When his work was read as poetry, it was viewed
with a skeptical eye. In general, critics who have
approached his work with a sense of humor have
been willing to forgive Nash some slight irregular-
ities in his rhythms and some stiffness of imagery
for the amusement he provides, while those
who have dismissed his work as insubstantial
have been critics who believe that humor is, by its
very nature, less relevant than sober reflection in
literature.
One writer who worked to make the case for
Nash’s reputation as a poet was Archibald
MacLeish. MacLeish, a poet of serious repute,
with three Pulitzer Prizes and associations with
the great literary figures of the 1920s, objects to
the description ‘‘light verse’’ in his introduction
to a 1975 collection of Nash’s poetry,I Wouldn’t
Have Missed It. Noting that what Nash wrote
was neither ‘‘light’’ nor ‘‘verse,’’ he explains that
‘‘his mastery, which was real enough, had noth-
ing to do with a combination of the two. It
consisted in the invention of a form, uniquely
his own, which defied all the categories and, far
more than that, altered the sensibility of his
time.’’ Thirty years later, in 2005, reviewing a
new biography of Nash, Alexandra Mullen
wrote in the literary journalNew Criterionthat
one reason that Nash has been ignored by critics
is that he did not fit the profile of the starvingCOMPARE
&
CONTRAST 1938:African safaris are only available to
the very wealthy, who often undertake such
excursions to kill animals for trophies.
Today:Safaris can be booked through local
travel agencies, and generally the popula-
tions of native species, especially endan-
gered ones, are protected by strict laws.
1938:The Great Depression, which started
at the beginning of the 1930s, has driven
audiences’ tastes toward humor and fantasy
in the arts, including poetry. Magazines are
a major source of entertainment, and many
national magazines publish some poetry.
Today:With the rise of interactive events such
as the slam poetry movement, poetry is again
becoming a form of popular entertainment.
1938:Many Americans feel that they can
ignore the problems of the rest of the world.
The Nazi regime in Germany expands into
neighboring Rhineland and prepares forassaults on Czechoslovakia and Poland, but
the noninterventionist movement still has
strong support in the United States.
Today:Travel and Internet communication
have raised awareness about the cultures
of distant lands and their problems. Many
Americans keep themselves informed about
conflicts throughout the world and advocate
for U.S. involvement in international peace
matters.
1938:Most media strive to follow standar-
dized rules of grammar, which makes a sec-
ondary usage, such as ‘‘hippopotami’’ as the
plural of ‘‘hippopotamus,’’ stand out.
Today:In modern culture, traditional gram-
mar is often fused with new words and new
styles that have evolved with quickly emerg-
ing technologies, such as the abbreviated
forms of language necessitated by text mes-
saging and instant messaging.The Hippopotamus