Custard, in Very Good Company
posted by Andrea Perry
Who has ever had so much fun with words??? Anything I have ever read by Ogden Nash has blown me away, so it was very hard to narrow things down to a single book, but I'd probably choose Custard and Company. Custard is a selection of Nash's poems from his many other works. For anyone not familiar with this self-proclaimed "worsifier", surely you've heard that ..."Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker?"From Cricket of Carador to Parents Keep Out: Elderly Poems for Youngerly Readers, Nash never ceases to be clever, amusing, and smart, and I am so very jealous. Have you ever heard a cow described so perfectly?
The cow is of the bovine ilk:
One end is moo, the other, milk.
I don't mind eels
Except as meals.
And the way they feels.
Behold the hippopotamus!
We laugh at how he looks to us,
And yet in moments dank and grim
I wonder how we look to him.
Peace, peace, thou hippopotamus!
We really look all right to us,
As you no doubt delight the eye
Of other hippopotami.
And finally, one of my all time favorites, The Octopus:
Tell me, O Octopus, I begs,
Is those things arms, or is they legs?
I marvel at thee, Octopus:
If I were thou, I'd call me Us.
If you have never experienced the pleasure of his verse, pick up a copy of anything Nash sometime very soon. You won't be disappointed.
No comments:
Post a Comment