‘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)

April soft, April cold

Praise the spells and bless the charms,
I found April in my arms.
April golden, April cloudy,
Gracious, cruel, tender, rowdy;
April soft in flowered languor,
April cold with sudden anger,
Ever changing, ever true --
I love April, I love you.

-- Odgen Nash, "Always Marry an April Girl''

Wind and taxes

“Indoors or out, no one relaxes in March, that month of wind and taxes, the wind will presently disappear, the taxes last us all the year.”  

-- Ogden Nash