Characters like Buhlul, Welsford points out,
also appear in English literature, beginning with
Beowulf. In this early, English poem, for instance,
Welsford identifies Hunferth as athul(Old Eng-
lishbyle) meaning a learned poet (Welsford 84).
But Welsford also cites evidence to suggest
that ‘‘thebylewas a kind of court-jester’’ (Wels-
ford 86). Thus Welsford concludes that ‘‘Hun-
ferth is abyleand possibly also an abusive fool’’
(Welsford 87).
In the guise of the poet-fool, Nash, follow-
ing the pattern of historical and literary antece-
dents, is both truth-teller and buffoon. As
soothsayer, Nash imparts a kind of folk wisdom,
or ‘‘horse-sense’’ to use Walter Blair’s term, as
when Nash’s speaker reminds parents, ‘‘Many
an infant that screams like a calliope / Could be
soothed with a little attention to its diope.’’ In a
society in which royal courts have given way to
democratic institutions, the poet-fool in Nash’s
twentieth-century, American society is an ordi-
nary figure, but one with a special talent for
expressing proverbial wisdom. The basis for the
truth told by Nash’s poet-fool is Nash’s observa-
tion of people, his habit of ‘‘noting human traits
and characteristics you might see in an elevator,
at the dinner table, at a party or a bridge game’’
(Newquist 271). Like the professional comedian,
Nash is someone who ‘‘prowls around looking
for new patterns and new insights about how
people behave’’ (Fisher 9). Many of Nash’s
poems begin with an observation, for example:
‘‘The camel has a single hump; / The dromedary
two.’’ From that starting point, Nash proceeds
in a manner that again mirrors the method of
some professional comedians who then ‘‘come
up with a twist that highlights the relativity or
absurdity of that perspective’’ (Fisher 70), as in
‘‘The Camel’’:
The camel has a single hump,
The dromedary two,
Or else the other way around,
I’m never sure are you.
Many of Nash’s poems about animals fol-
low the same pattern; the poet-fool presents us
with one perspective of the animal and then com-
ments upon that view. One example, ‘‘The Tur-
tle,’’ serves not only to show this pattern, but
also to illustrate Nash’s economical expression,
and his dexterous manipulation of sound to
compliment the sense of the poem:
The turtle lives twixt plated decks
Which practically conceal its sex;
I think it clever of the turtle
In such a fix to be so fertile.Notice how slowly, like a turtle, the reader
voices the first line, slowed by the series of nine
phonological stops (/t/, twice each in ‘‘turtle’’
and ‘‘twixt’’; /p/, /t/, and /d/, all in ‘‘plated’’;
and /d/ and /k/ in ‘‘decks’’). The difficulty the
reader experiences is perhaps not unlike that of
the turtle trying to be fertile.
In making observations about animals,
Nash’s poet-fool often reveals a truth about him-
self, usually a foible or moral weakness character-
istic of human nature in general. The spectator
watching the camel reveals his ignorance. The
observer of the turtle, we may speculate, imagines
copulating turtles, while the person who defines
the cow displays a delightful naivete:
‘‘The cow is of the bovine ilk; / One end is
moo, the other, milk’’.
As Nash himself confesses and as these poems
illustrate, Nash is primarily concerned with
‘‘human nature, particularly the relationships
between men and women, the relationships of
humans to the world in which they live and their
attempts to cope with it’’ (Newquist 269). In defin-
ing ‘‘The Perfect Husband,’’ for example, Nash
observes: ‘‘He tells you when you’ve got on too
much lipstick, / And helps you with your girdle
when your hips stick.’’ Similarly, the poet-fool
offers advice to parents about how to care for
‘‘The Baby’’: ‘‘A bit of talcum / Is always walcum.’’
At the same time that Nash’s poet-fool
expresses sage advice, the ludicrous form of his
maxims belittles and ridicules the speaker. In
particular, the phonological incongruity of rhymes
such as ‘‘calliope/diope’’ and ‘‘talcum/walcum’’
gives the impression of an undereducated buffoon.
Pretentiousness, suggested for example by the
classification ‘‘bovine ilk’’ in ‘‘The Cow,’’ is com-
ically deflated by the speaker’s innocent definition
that follows it. The expression of wisdom, the
incongruous sound effects, the comic deflation,
all serve to endear the poet-fool to his audience.
In the endearing figure of the poet-fool, Nash
found the mask from behind which he could
express himself. In an interview with Roy New-
quist, Nash comments on the persona he discov-
ered: ‘‘In the verse I have a sort of disguise I can
assume so that I’m not so vulnerable.... There-
fore I was able to hide behind this mask, keeping
people from knowing whether I’m ignorant or just
fooling around’’ (Newquist 271–272). Having dis-
covered this mask (‘‘mask’’ comes from the Arabic
maskhara, meaning clown, or buffoonery), Nash
proceeded to speak. The voice that emerges from
behind the mask is that of an ironic moralist,The Hippopotamus