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Aside from the (then) complete works of Emily Dickinson that I started to read in 1994, this might have been the book that took me the longest to read from beginning to end. I started this book probably nine years ago, back when I read other Ogden Nash collections<\/a> and other poetry to my toddlers as they played. This would have been one of the last I started reading to them here at Nogglestead before I abandoned the practice. This volume languished in my bedside table and then on my dresser for a year (both book accumulation points<\/a>) as I started to read it on the deck in the evenings.<\/p>\nIt took me a while to get dialed into Nash again. As I said, it’s been a decade since I’ve read his work in earnest, and I’ve read a bunch of poetry since then, some good, mostly bad, but I found myself only reading a poem or two from this book before getting tired of the schtick. After probably a year of this mostly off and sometimes on reading, I packed the book along on a couple of trips and read it a little more doggedly. So I came to appreciate again the humor and get back into it.<\/p>\n
So, if you’re not familiar with Ogden Nash, he wrote wry humorous poetry in the early part of the 20th century focusing on urban topics. He varied line length to a great degree and did some whacky spellings to make rhymes. Once I got back into it, I was amused appropriately.<\/p>\n
One of the interesting things, though, is one of the allusions jumped out. From “Locust-Lovers, Attention!” we get this:<\/p>\n
It is as fantastic as something out of H.G. Wells or Jules Verne or G.A. Henty
\nTo watch a creature that has been underground ever since it hatched shortly previous to 1920,<\/p><\/blockquote>\nI mean, I know of H.G. Wells<\/a>, and I’ve read Jules Verne<\/a>. But who is G.A. Henty?<\/p>\n