I'm a Stranger Here Myself

by Ogden Nash

1938 Little Brown & Company hardcover, too early for ISBN. Ogden Nash. A collection of short stories about life.

Genres: Poetry, Humor, Classics, Fiction, Reference

283 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1938

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

[Meg]

Poets aren't very useful
Because they aren't very consumeful or very produceful
Even poets of great promise
Don't contribute much to trade and commerce,
To which, indeed, even poets of great achievement
Are a positive bereavement
(...)
So my advice to mothers is if you are the mother of a poet don't gamble on the chance that future generations may crown him.
Follow your original impulse and drown him.

[Danette]

Lots of chuckles.
2018 - a book of poetry

[Dawn Dorsey]

Nash's poetry entertains with satire, social and political. His targets range from fashions, to social mores, to behavior, to gossip, to politics, in all their human varieties. Note that this volume was published in 1938, and many of the verses had been previously published in New Yorker, Saturday evening Post, and other periodicals of the day. Nevertheless, what is remarkable is that most of the pokes apply today as well as they did eighty years ago. The bogeymen of the day were Stalin and Hitler, and their rising power, rather than assorted Moslem terrorists and spoiled, over fed Oriental princes, but the concern for the future of mankind as the same. Nash's political observations apply to today's swamp as well as to that of his own day, and exhibit the same cynicism, as is well phrased in the following excerpt.

"The Politician" page 193

"Behold the politician.
Self-preservation is his ambition.
He thrives in the D. of C.,
Where he was sent by you and me.
...
He has developed a sixth sense
About living at the public expense,
Because in private competition
He would encounter malnutrition.
...
Some politicians are Republican, some Democratic,
And their feud is dramatic,
But except for the name
They are identically the same.
..."

[Catherine]

Ogden Nash definitely wrote his poetry for his contemporaries. I think they would have found them a lot more humorous than I did. There were a handful that I felt stood the test of time, and those I enjoyed immensely. If I were looking for a cultural pulse on the late 1930's I would find them useful. For my part, I found them dated and of not much interest.

[Lisa]

I don't know how exactly to rate this volume of poetry. My copy is the 34th printing from 1938. Nash's poems don't require a lot of pondering to understand. (There are some references to then-current events and trends that a current reader might not get without looking up.) He uses creative spelling at times to make his rhymes, which is part of his humor. I do recommend reading at least a few that catch your fancy out loud just to enjoy the rhythm of his language.

The downside: Unsurprisingly, there are a number of poems with sexist stereotypes and racist language (that either wasn't considered racist back then, or frankly was racist but considered 'acceptable'), which took away some of my enjoyment.

The upside: On the other hand, there are poems that still ring true today -- poems skewering bankers and politicians, the one about stores and marketing that's spot on even though the medium has change from paper mail to e-mail, amusing poems about various illnesses, a funny poem about a golf caddy -- showing that American society and human nature in the 2020s isn't so different than it was in the 1930s. Three stars for those gems hiding within.

[Logan Hardgrave]

A solid book of light verse which pokes fun at the little quirks of life from the time that it was written. Some of the jabs don’t make sense now, but a lot still hold true. It’s a collection of less dramatic poetry meant more to entertain than thoughtfully provoke but that doesn’t mean it can’t have value. There were some bits where Nash showed off impressive wit and other parts where I rolled my eyes. I feel like a lot of the titles for the poems turned out to be more intriguing than the poem itself. It felt like there were multiple instances where he’d name a poem something like “The Hemorrhage Never Stops” and then proceed to rhyme about the color red. Which is funny, undoubtedly, but some of his titles were so good I wish they weren’t used ironically. Here are all the poems that stood out to me…

“Miriam’s Lucky Day”
“The Unselfish Husband”
“The Common Cold”
“The Strange Case of Mr. Donnybrook’s Boredom”
“Everybody Make Poets”
“Allergy Met A Bear”
“Time Marches On”

[Timons Esaias]

Part of our going-to-bed ritual in this household is that we read a poem out loud, usually light verse. Ogden Nash is the favorite, and this is one of the collections on our shelf. I believe we somehow never took it off the shelf before, so many of these poems were new to us.

Our copy was printed in 1938, was inscribed in May of 1947 by Kenneth Colby, M.D. of San Francisco [who I suspect is this person, with their own wikipedia page: Kenneth Colby - Wikipedia ]; and yes, some of the poems are dated or obscured by topical references that Google has never heard of. For the most part, though, the humor is intact.

The collection contains "Parsley for Vice-President" and "The Common Cold" which I've seen elsewhere, but almost none of the food and animal poems that figure among his most memorable. And yes, my wife said, "He had a deadline," half a dozen times. Maybe a dozen. But they express many of the frustrations of life today, and remind us that they're nothing all that new or oppressive; and they amuse.

[Becky]

I loved reading and laughing through this book of humorous unconventional poetry. Years ago I had read a few of Ogden Nash’s poems but this was fun to immerse myself in his amazing variety of subject matter. Not many people could write like him. He was knowledgeable about so many things that he could have fun writing lengthy opinions about them and help people to laugh at themselves, their foibles and their history. His vocabulary is gigantic.

[Will Arbaugh]

I discovered Nash from a cousin of mine who read selected works to me and I remembered fits of giggles. He is like a Dr. Seuss for adults in his comedic turns of phrase and profound insights into the human condition. Very well worth the read. This man was Shel Silverstein before Shel was.

[Anam Cara]

Needed to read the cicada poem to get ready for the emergence of Brood X - a 17 year cicada

[Douglas Gates]

Honest, rhyming, slightly silly. Word creation can be fun and noble, but three hundred pages of it makes it seem like a crutch.

[Milt]

No stranger to good humor, he is adept at sweeping raillery and Nash-ing of truth.

[Marissa Lauren]

I love Ogden Nash but this was just too pretentious and racist

[Jeffrey Bumiller]

I love my copy of this book: Hardcover, dark red with gold print, missing the dust jacket, published by Little Brown and Company in Boston, in 1940.

Contains an inscription on the title page: "To Evelyn: So that Ogden's use may remind you of my abuse of the language- Steve, 1940."

Nash was a really clever and talented guy, almost all of these poems have at least some lines that will make you smile; some poems are just brilliant.

Crazy rhyme schemes, the occasional made up word. Funny and lots of fun.

Postscript: Ogden Nash was on a U.S. stamp, it was the first stamp to ever contain the word SEX. Awesome!

[Neil McCrea]

Ogden Nash is always a joy to read even if he is often superficial and goofy. To describe him as Dr. Seuss for adults would not be entirely off base. The major criticism I hear when talking about Nash is that his work is too much of its time and doesn't translate well to contemporary sensibilities. That may very well be true, but until I find someone who can do what Nash does within the current zeitgeist, I will continue to revisit him.

[Liz]

Love Ogden Nash. He's so witty and pithy. He complains through poetry and it is hilarious.

PopSugar 2016 Reading Challenge | Task 31: A book of poetry

Book Riot Read Harder Challenge 2016 | Task 4: Read a book aloud to someone else (I confess it wasn't the entire book, just select poems, but I'm counting it).

[Womana]

Very funny