On a slightly deeper level, it is almost inevi-
table, psychologically, that a poem so strongly
concerned with what its speaker thinks about
another character would turn to the speaker’s
curiosity about what the object of his attention
thinks about him. It would not be surprising to
find out that a gossip is worried about being
gossiped about, or that a police officer would
see the world as a place filled with potential
criminals. Nash is smart enough to know and
to admit that psychological exploration is just
another form of psychological projection.
It has to raise curiosity when a poem refers
to anything with psychological implications by
using such severe terms asdankandgrim. Even a
poem considered an example of light verse is still
responsible for the words it uses, and these are
some very potent words, especially given the
context in which they are used. To some extent,
these words could be taken only half-seriously,
as could just about anything that Ogden Nash
wrote. They might just be a bit of comic hyper-
bole, exaggerating the frustration of the moment
when self-consciousness interrupts the poet’s
train of thought. But even if their tone is excused
as being excessive for comic effect, these words
still mark an important turning point in the
poem’s meaning. They show that being thought
about, even when one is being thought about by
a creature as slow-witted and unintelligent as
the hippopotamus, is a heavy weight upon the
human soul. This is the kind of awareness of
one’s self that has led philosophers such as
the existentialists Soren Kierkegaard, Friedrich
Nietszche, and Jean-Paul Sartre to look on exis-
tence itself as a terrible, crushing responsibility.
The poem glides along smoothly when it is about
the human poet thinking about the hippopota-
mus; when the tables are turned, however, and
the poet thinks that he is being watched, the idea
becomes dank and grim. Nash somehow man-
ages, without breaking the poem’s poetic or spi-
ritual rhythm, to slip guilt and inadequacy, and
even a little existential dread, into a funny poem
about a funny animal that has a funny plural-
ization of its name.
The weight of the idea of being assessed is
somewhat refuted later in the poem, when Nash
has his speaker assure the hippopotamus that it
is should not feel bad about staring because
humans are comfortable with who they are. His
words, though, raise doubts about how much
self-confidence he really means to convey. A
more reassuring word choice might be to say
that we humans look ‘‘fine’’ to each other, as it
expresses actual approval, while the words that
Nash uses in line 6 only express acceptance. As
with the heavier words already examined, the
choice of mild words was probably driven by a
judgment about which would sound funnier,
spinning the poem around again in another unex-
pected direction. Still, what remains on the page
is that human beings are deeply, profoundly con-
cerned about what the hippopotamus (or, for
that matter, anyone) might think of them, and
the assurances that they are not concerned come
out weak and unconvincing.
‘‘The Hippopotamus’’ is a humorous poem
about a humorous subject; delving into the truth
beneath the words does not change that. Readers
are likely to walk away from the poem feeling
that the author’s intention in writing it was,
primarily, to use the silly but musical wordhip-
popotami, and secondarily, to show that beauty
is in the eye of the beholder. These are undeni-
ably aspects of the poem, but they are only a part
of the bigger picture. To give Nash the credit he
deserves, a good reading of this poem requires a
look at how vanity and shame are bound up in
the ideas and emotions that humans ascribe to
animals. This makes ‘‘The Hippopotamus’’ not a
heavy poem but rather a light poem with a strong
message planted in its center.
Source:David Kelly, Critical Essay on ‘‘The Hippopot-
amus,’’ inPoetry for Students, Gale, Cengage Learning,
2010.Frank Kermode
In the following review ofCandy Is Dandy: The
Best of Ogden Nash, Kermode characterizes
Nash’s humorous poems as tedious and states
that his oeuvre shows little variety or development.
I try to imitate him here, but he is probably
quite inimitable.
My own talent for this sort of thing being
limited and his virtually illimitable.
So Anthony Burgess in his Nashian intro-
duction to this rather large selection, first pub-
lished in 1983 and now out in paperback. Burgess
does pretty well, but is right to feel that he doesn’t
sound very like the real thing. As he points out,
Nash, being American, wrote a slightly different
language. He will consider ‘despotic’ and ‘Arctic’,
a good rhyme, also ‘want’ and ‘haunt’ (though
well-spoken Englishmen of a century back might
not have questioned this one). Moreover, he goes
in for rhymes that frequently entail the joky mod-
ification of a rhyme word, so that ‘Hypochon-
driacs’ calls for ‘Adirondiacs’, and ‘cognac’ forThe Hippopotamus