The Exaggeration Of Humor In The Poetry Of Ogden Nash

From Shakespeare to South Park, the exaggeration of humorous situations through satire invites the audience first to laugh, then to think. Rallying against everything from the bills on his desk to the wasps in their nest, Ogden Nash’s satirical and witty lampooning of middle American existence thrilled a nation. In my four poems, The Moose, Someone Needs A Vacation, Only A Stranger Could Love, and We Solve ‘Cos We Have To, I attempt to imitate what Anthony Burgess wrote, (in Nashian style himself,) was “quite inimitable.” However, through careful attention to style and content, I believe I have successfully mimicked the enduring and humorous light verse of Ogden Nash.
Over the course of his entire literary career, with few exceptions, Ogden …show more content…
Nash’s ability to use a pun well is a rare one. Even in Disch’s incredibly negative criticism of Nash’s work, (most bitingly, calling him a “well-brought-up eleven-year-old,”) he admits Nash’s skill with puns and wordplay is impressive and what he is best at. In The Moose, I observe how the plural form of moose may be called meese, and likewise, “when feeble, it is considered nearly deseesed.” Inversely, a singular and lively moose is ivory and unwively. Here, I play on the duality of the word “singular,” to mean the opposite of plural and to be unwed, and thus, unwively. In We Solve ‘Cos We Have To, I attempt to make as many puns as possible in only two lines and a title. Most obviously, the declaration of the speaker that math is sinful because of the use of sine ratios (also spelled sin) in trigonometry is an attempt to be funny. To compound this pun, the title references both the speaker being forced to do math and another trigonometrical ratio: cosine, or cos. Furthermore, the subtitle, The Three Angles’ Message, is a twofold pun. First, it is another mathematical pun as trigonometry is the study of triangles, and a triangle has three angles. Second, it is a reference to the Revelation, in which the Three Angels’ Message is a warning to the world just before the return of Jesus, telling humanity to either choose …show more content…
In all my poems, I attempt to reveal something about human nature and American life while following classic Nashian themes. In Only A Stranger Could Love, as typical of many Nash poems, such as Reflection on Babies and The Parent, I humorously discuss babies and parenthood. By poking fun at overly proud mothers and their tendency to show off their babies to strangers, I simultaneously satirize people in general who accomplish something but then show it off nonstop. In The Moose, similar to The Stork, I tell more about the observer than the actual animal. When the poet-fool associates being single and young together, he conversely implies that to be married means to be near the end of life. Thus, I satirize the fool who thinks “unwively” is a word and believes marriage is a death sentence. Puns aside, in We Solve ‘Cos We Have To, I attempt to poke fun at overzealously religious people who take face value in things like math or science and immediately discount it. In this case, they see the word “sin” and think it’s unholy. Although Nash himself rarely mocked piety, this poem is definitely in the vain of Nashian poetry. He often found humor in those that jumped to funny and strange conclusions, for instance, in The Cow, where the poet-fool makes the decision that “The cow is of the bovine ilk; /