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Ogden Nash

Frederic Ogden Nash (August 19, 1902 – May 19, 1971) was an American poet well known for his light verse, of which he wrote over 500 pieces. With his unconventional rhyming schemes, he was declared by The New York Times the country's best-known producer of humorous poetry.

Nash was born in Rye, New York, the son of Mattie (Chenault) and Edmund Strudwick Nash. His father owned and operated an import–export company, and because of business obligations, the family often relocated. Nash was descended from Abner Nash, an early governor of North Carolina. The city of Nashville, Tennessee, was named after Abner's brother, Francis, a Revolutionary War general.

Throughout his life, Nash loved to rhyme. "I think in terms of rhyme, and have since I was six years old," he stated in a 1958 news interview. He had a fondness for crafting his own words whenever rhyming words did not exist but admitted that crafting rhymes was not always the easiest task.

His family lived briefly in Savannah, Georgia, in a carriage house owned by Juliette Gordon Low, the founder of the Girl Scouts of the USA. He wrote a poem about Mrs. Low's House. After graduating from St. George's School in Newport County, Rhode Island, Nash entered Harvard University in 1920, only to drop out a year later.

He returned as a teacher to St. George's for one year before he returned to New York. There, he took up selling bonds about which Nash reportedly quipped, "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." Nash then took a position as a writer of the streetcar card ads for Barron Collier, a company that had employed another Baltimore resident, F. Scott Fitzgerald. While working as an editor at Doubleday, he submitted some short rhymes to The New Yorker. The editor Harold Ross wrote Nash to ask for more: "They are about the most original stuff we have had lately." Nash spent three months in 1931 in working on the editorial staff for The New Yorker.

In 1931, he married Frances Leonard. He published his first collection of poems, Hard Lines, the same year, which earned him national recognition. Some of his poems reflected an anti-establishment feeling. For example, one verse, titled "Common Sense", asks:

Why did the Lord give us agility,

If not to evade responsibility?

In 1934, Nash moved to Baltimore, Maryland, where he remained until his death in 1971. Nash thought of Baltimore as home. After his return from a brief move to New York, he wrote, "I could have loved New York had I not loved Balti-more."

Nash died at Baltimore's Johns Hopkins Hospital on May 19, 1971, of heart failure 10 days after suffering a stroke while receiving treatment for kidney failure. He is buried in East Side Cemetery in North Hampton, New Hampshire.

At the time of his death in 1971, The New York Times said his "droll verse with its unconventional rhymes made him the country's best-known producer of humorous poetry."

A biography, Ogden Nash: the Life and Work of America's Laureate of Light Verse, was written by Douglas M. Parker, published in 2005 and in paperback in 2007. The book was written with the cooperation of the Nash family, and quotes extensively from Nash's personal correspondence as well as his poetry.

His daughter Isabel was married to noted photographer Fred Eberstadt, and his granddaughter, Fernanda Eberstadt, is an acclaimed author. Nash had one other daughter, author Linell Nash Smith.

Courtesy--wikipedia

- Ogden Nash

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