‘Great when you’re dejected’

Ogden Nash (1902-1971) and Dagmar (1921-2001), actress and television personality, on the TV game show Masquerade Party, in 1955. Nash graduated from and taught for a year at St. George’s School, in Middletown, R.I.

A Tribute to Ogden Nash

Time for fanfare, time for flash,
Time to honor Ogden Nash.
Lively, innovative, clever—
Humdrum absolutely never.
Nash is great when you’re dejected,
Since he’s apt to lift your spirits with a bouncy ending that is hardly what you expected.

— Felicia Nimue Ackerman is a Providence-based poet and a professor of philosophy at Brown University. (First appeared in Light,  with a slightly different title)