The Face is Familiar: The Selected Poems

by Ogden Nash

The Face is Familiar. This 352-page hardcover was published in 1940 by Little, Brown and Company (1st edition, 2nd printing).

Genres: Poetry, Humor, Fiction

352 pages, hardcover

First published January 1, 1931

About the author

Frederic Ogden Nash was an American poet well known for his light verse. 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".

Reviews

[Eric Buhrer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was in my parents' library when I was young and impressionable. (no longer young) Along with The Thurber Carnival it contributed greatly to making me the phenomenon I am today.

[Timons Esaias · Rating 4 out of 5]

The bedtime ritual in this household is the reading of a poem or a page or two of fiction, often children's picture books, or things like Coraline. There have been several readings of A Child's Garden of Verses over the years, but the major part of our repertoire has been the collections of Ogden Nash. We started with two late subject-based collections - Zoo and Food - but I eventually went on bookfinder.com and rounded up the original collections that he put together during his lifetime. This is one of those, the first "Selected Verse" collection, drawn from what were then his previous six volumes.

It has "The Centipede" and "The Panther" and "The Rhinoceros" and "Lines Written to Console Those Ladies Distressed by the Lines "Men Seldom Make Passes, etc."" and "Adventures of Isabel" and "The Camel" and "The Wombat" and it goes on and on. "The Tale of Custard the Dragon" is in here. So is "To a Small Boy Standing on My Shoes While I Am Wearing Them" and "The Germ."

So what are you waiting for???

[Ian Banks · Rating 5 out of 5]

These are poems begging to be read aloud. Mr Nash has a wonderfully impish sense of humour that you forgive him his snobbery because it seems to be so affected and harmless. He also plays games with the structures of his poems that in a less fun writer would be very frustrating: some of his lines don’t scan so he makes them almost a paragraph long; sometimes he changes the spelling of a word to make it fit a rhyme; and occasionally his rhymes don’t quite get to the end of the line. All things that a lesser writer would find unforgiven are accepted because they are offered as such a obvious and deliberate fault.

Anyway, there were quite a lot of new poems her, but I must single out The Strange Case Of The Ambitious Caddy as my favourite in the entire collection.

[Margot]

I enjoy Nash's poems, but this book is written with a philosophy I have a great deal of trouble with. The man was a writer, with a salary. He had a wife and kids.. so his life really was rich, comparatively. Only, he writes of the idea that only lawyers and doctors could do well.. Totally missing what he had created for himself as an artist. This saddens me. I hope that, when we evaluate ourselves, we don't have to look to the Jones', but can appreciate where we are at the moment.

[Tal Feiner · Rating 4 out of 5]

►Honestly, this is such a fun read; just in general, a fun read. I find myself going back to that little book of poems every once in a while just to get a little laugh or for a well put insight on life...
I (like some of the reviewers here) have also found this whimsical book in and old family library. Guess someone had a really great taste in books◄

[Micebyliz]

always loved Nash. my fave these days is the one with QWERTYUIOP :)

[Milt · Rating 4 out of 5]

reaping and rhyming the Nash-ing of truth, not averse to verse

[Buck · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not a poetry appreciator, but I always liked Ogden Nash. He was a favorite of my father, and I think that's where the book I found on the shelf must have come from. It took me four months to read this book, a poem or two or three at a time, and then I was surprised when at last I came to the final poem. The poetry really didn't float my boat, but I do admire Nash's whimsey and cleverness of rhyme.

[Joyce Roderick · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the fun things about ON is that he felt perfectly free to rewrite his poems between collections and editions of collections. Freeze this one in time. It contains the best.