Doggerel Ditties:in the style of Ogden Nash
Barbara Hepworth once wrote this:
‘Perhaps what one wants to say is formed in childhood, and the rest of one’s life is spent in trying to say it.’
In her case, it was through great contemporary sculptures. In my case? Well, my first English schoolmaster judged:
‘Flippant boy. That’s what you are. Flippant. About serious matters and great human
endeavours. All I can hope is that for your sake you will grow out of it.’
At this time, my hero was A.A.Milne’s Sir Brian. I walked up and down repeating what I
remembered of the words and energetically miming the accompanying action:
Sir Brian had a battle-axe
With great big knobs on
He went among the villagers
And blipped them on the head.
On Tuesday and on Saturday
But mostly on the latter day
He called them all together
And this is what he said:
‘I am Sir Brian, sper-lash!
I am Sir Brian, sper-losh!
I am Sir Brian
As bold as a lion
Is anyone else for a wash?’
I would roll around in delight at this picture of extrovert schadenfreude at work. Seventy years later, I decided to finish it off, thus:
One man said ‘Please, Sir,
Can I have my say?
Most Tuesdays
And on Saturday
But always on the latter day,
I wear my special suiting,
‘Cos I am SDA.
So, yes Sir, for your blipping,
Could you choose another day?’
My English master would have been disappointed. I didn’t—grow out of it, that is. In fact I got worse. It was all the fault of Ogden Nash, that great American rhymester. I never could resist:
VERSUS
The Golden Trashery
Of Ogden Nashery
The grand outrageousness of his puns was matched by his deliberate flouting of syntax
conventions and scanning; and by his manipulation of invented words to produce an end-of-sentence rhyme, often lines away from its mate.
Then there were his little pieces:
Men never make passes
At girls who wear glasses.
Parsley…
Is garsley.
The trouble with a kitten’s
THAT
Eventually it becomes a
CAT
Thus Ogden Nash on the progressive inevitability of vanishing childhood innocence and playful dependence. But Nash remains silent about the nine or so lives of adult cat-ness; tom, cool, hep, fat, and nap for example. As the poet might have put it, but didn’t:
Protection rules for Mother
SWAN,
Until one day, the cygnet’s
GONE
So Mother Swan just nods her
HEAD
‘Come on, Dad. Let’s go to
BED
‘After all,’ said Mother
HEN
‘Cyclic life means start
AGAIN’
I still laugh out loud at the Nash longer cautionary tales, mostly with stings in them. And I continue to marvel at his versatility—he might say ‘versustility’—and range of subject matter. His curiosity was insatiable. Nothing was sacred to that penetrative pen.
Yet he was never destructive, vulgar or crude.
(Unlike some pieces included here,
When even apostasy may be seen to intrude.)
Nash remains uniquely funny for his gentle ridicule of the pompous, the pretentious, the
gruesomely ordinary and the outrageously bizarre. He would have approved of calypsos and
calypsonians who can be sharp, bitter and iconoclastic.
I’m glad I’ve got that off my chest. Now I have to distance myself from it. Someone said that a sense of indebtedness is the most corrupting form of human relationship. Distorts everything and satisfies no one. Especially if a second-rate acolyte is thought to be clutching at the coat-tails of the inspired and sucking at the cloth of that inspiration.
So if the fault is by distant derivation that of Ogden Nash, the excuse for this claim is the old one about imitation being the sincerest form of flattery. Or something like that.
I wish it were indeed so. But Ogden Nash is inimitable. The Doggerel Ditties that follow are relieved in their pedestrian parochialism by one or two which, in places, are less bad than the others. Let me know when you find one. It would be a kindness. As that English teacher also once wrote:
‘HE IS TRYING—VERY’
So you have been warned. If you are nonetheless determined on mindless masochism, proceed now. The contents eschew strict chronological sequence and are accordingly without opus numbers. The place and date of composition are laid bare when I remembered to do so. And footnotes hopefully make clear the obscure for new players. Hopefully, because footnotes are often the ultimate refuge for the intellectually confused and muddled writer.
One or two cuckoos have found their way into the doggerel nest.
They may serve as light relief from the rest.
The rhyme was intended as you will.....
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‘Perhaps what one wants to say is formed in childhood, and the rest of one’s life is spent in trying to say it.’
In her case, it was through great contemporary sculptures. In my case? Well, my first English schoolmaster judged:
‘Flippant boy. That’s what you are. Flippant. About serious matters and great human
endeavours. All I can hope is that for your sake you will grow out of it.’
At this time, my hero was A.A.Milne’s Sir Brian. I walked up and down repeating what I
remembered of the words and energetically miming the accompanying action:
Sir Brian had a battle-axe
With great big knobs on
He went among the villagers
And blipped them on the head.
On Tuesday and on Saturday
But mostly on the latter day
He called them all together
And this is what he said:
‘I am Sir Brian, sper-lash!
I am Sir Brian, sper-losh!
I am Sir Brian
As bold as a lion
Is anyone else for a wash?’
I would roll around in delight at this picture of extrovert schadenfreude at work. Seventy years later, I decided to finish it off, thus:
One man said ‘Please, Sir,
Can I have my say?
Most Tuesdays
And on Saturday
But always on the latter day,
I wear my special suiting,
‘Cos I am SDA.
So, yes Sir, for your blipping,
Could you choose another day?’
My English master would have been disappointed. I didn’t—grow out of it, that is. In fact I got worse. It was all the fault of Ogden Nash, that great American rhymester. I never could resist:
VERSUS
The Golden Trashery
Of Ogden Nashery
The grand outrageousness of his puns was matched by his deliberate flouting of syntax
conventions and scanning; and by his manipulation of invented words to produce an end-of-sentence rhyme, often lines away from its mate.
Then there were his little pieces:
Men never make passes
At girls who wear glasses.
Parsley…
Is garsley.
The trouble with a kitten’s
THAT
Eventually it becomes a
CAT
Thus Ogden Nash on the progressive inevitability of vanishing childhood innocence and playful dependence. But Nash remains silent about the nine or so lives of adult cat-ness; tom, cool, hep, fat, and nap for example. As the poet might have put it, but didn’t:
Protection rules for Mother
SWAN,
Until one day, the cygnet’s
GONE
So Mother Swan just nods her
HEAD
‘Come on, Dad. Let’s go to
BED
‘After all,’ said Mother
HEN
‘Cyclic life means start
AGAIN’
I still laugh out loud at the Nash longer cautionary tales, mostly with stings in them. And I continue to marvel at his versatility—he might say ‘versustility’—and range of subject matter. His curiosity was insatiable. Nothing was sacred to that penetrative pen.
Yet he was never destructive, vulgar or crude.
(Unlike some pieces included here,
When even apostasy may be seen to intrude.)
Nash remains uniquely funny for his gentle ridicule of the pompous, the pretentious, the
gruesomely ordinary and the outrageously bizarre. He would have approved of calypsos and
calypsonians who can be sharp, bitter and iconoclastic.
I’m glad I’ve got that off my chest. Now I have to distance myself from it. Someone said that a sense of indebtedness is the most corrupting form of human relationship. Distorts everything and satisfies no one. Especially if a second-rate acolyte is thought to be clutching at the coat-tails of the inspired and sucking at the cloth of that inspiration.
So if the fault is by distant derivation that of Ogden Nash, the excuse for this claim is the old one about imitation being the sincerest form of flattery. Or something like that.
I wish it were indeed so. But Ogden Nash is inimitable. The Doggerel Ditties that follow are relieved in their pedestrian parochialism by one or two which, in places, are less bad than the others. Let me know when you find one. It would be a kindness. As that English teacher also once wrote:
‘HE IS TRYING—VERY’
So you have been warned. If you are nonetheless determined on mindless masochism, proceed now. The contents eschew strict chronological sequence and are accordingly without opus numbers. The place and date of composition are laid bare when I remembered to do so. And footnotes hopefully make clear the obscure for new players. Hopefully, because footnotes are often the ultimate refuge for the intellectually confused and muddled writer.
One or two cuckoos have found their way into the doggerel nest.
They may serve as light relief from the rest.
The rhyme was intended as you will.....
Doggerel Ditties:in the style of Ogden Nash
Barbara Hepworth once wrote this:
‘Perhaps what one wants to say is formed in childhood, and the rest of one’s life is spent in trying to say it.’
In her case, it was through great contemporary sculptures. In my case? Well, my first English schoolmaster judged:
‘Flippant boy. That’s what you are. Flippant. About serious matters and great human
endeavours. All I can hope is that for your sake you will grow out of it.’
At this time, my hero was A.A.Milne’s Sir Brian. I walked up and down repeating what I
remembered of the words and energetically miming the accompanying action:
Sir Brian had a battle-axe
With great big knobs on
He went among the villagers
And blipped them on the head.
On Tuesday and on Saturday
But mostly on the latter day
He called them all together
And this is what he said:
‘I am Sir Brian, sper-lash!
I am Sir Brian, sper-losh!
I am Sir Brian
As bold as a lion
Is anyone else for a wash?’
I would roll around in delight at this picture of extrovert schadenfreude at work. Seventy years later, I decided to finish it off, thus:
One man said ‘Please, Sir,
Can I have my say?
Most Tuesdays
And on Saturday
But always on the latter day,
I wear my special suiting,
‘Cos I am SDA.
So, yes Sir, for your blipping,
Could you choose another day?’
My English master would have been disappointed. I didn’t—grow out of it, that is. In fact I got worse. It was all the fault of Ogden Nash, that great American rhymester. I never could resist:
VERSUS
The Golden Trashery
Of Ogden Nashery
The grand outrageousness of his puns was matched by his deliberate flouting of syntax
conventions and scanning; and by his manipulation of invented words to produce an end-of-sentence rhyme, often lines away from its mate.
Then there were his little pieces:
Men never make passes
At girls who wear glasses.
Parsley…
Is garsley.
The trouble with a kitten’s
THAT
Eventually it becomes a
CAT
Thus Ogden Nash on the progressive inevitability of vanishing childhood innocence and playful dependence. But Nash remains silent about the nine or so lives of adult cat-ness; tom, cool, hep, fat, and nap for example. As the poet might have put it, but didn’t:
Protection rules for Mother
SWAN,
Until one day, the cygnet’s
GONE
So Mother Swan just nods her
HEAD
‘Come on, Dad. Let’s go to
BED
‘After all,’ said Mother
HEN
‘Cyclic life means start
AGAIN’
I still laugh out loud at the Nash longer cautionary tales, mostly with stings in them. And I continue to marvel at his versatility—he might say ‘versustility’—and range of subject matter. His curiosity was insatiable. Nothing was sacred to that penetrative pen.
Yet he was never destructive, vulgar or crude.
(Unlike some pieces included here,
When even apostasy may be seen to intrude.)
Nash remains uniquely funny for his gentle ridicule of the pompous, the pretentious, the
gruesomely ordinary and the outrageously bizarre. He would have approved of calypsos and
calypsonians who can be sharp, bitter and iconoclastic.
I’m glad I’ve got that off my chest. Now I have to distance myself from it. Someone said that a sense of indebtedness is the most corrupting form of human relationship. Distorts everything and satisfies no one. Especially if a second-rate acolyte is thought to be clutching at the coat-tails of the inspired and sucking at the cloth of that inspiration.
So if the fault is by distant derivation that of Ogden Nash, the excuse for this claim is the old one about imitation being the sincerest form of flattery. Or something like that.
I wish it were indeed so. But Ogden Nash is inimitable. The Doggerel Ditties that follow are relieved in their pedestrian parochialism by one or two which, in places, are less bad than the others. Let me know when you find one. It would be a kindness. As that English teacher also once wrote:
‘HE IS TRYING—VERY’
So you have been warned. If you are nonetheless determined on mindless masochism, proceed now. The contents eschew strict chronological sequence and are accordingly without opus numbers. The place and date of composition are laid bare when I remembered to do so. And footnotes hopefully make clear the obscure for new players. Hopefully, because footnotes are often the ultimate refuge for the intellectually confused and muddled writer.
One or two cuckoos have found their way into the doggerel nest.
They may serve as light relief from the rest.
The rhyme was intended as you will.....
‘Perhaps what one wants to say is formed in childhood, and the rest of one’s life is spent in trying to say it.’
In her case, it was through great contemporary sculptures. In my case? Well, my first English schoolmaster judged:
‘Flippant boy. That’s what you are. Flippant. About serious matters and great human
endeavours. All I can hope is that for your sake you will grow out of it.’
At this time, my hero was A.A.Milne’s Sir Brian. I walked up and down repeating what I
remembered of the words and energetically miming the accompanying action:
Sir Brian had a battle-axe
With great big knobs on
He went among the villagers
And blipped them on the head.
On Tuesday and on Saturday
But mostly on the latter day
He called them all together
And this is what he said:
‘I am Sir Brian, sper-lash!
I am Sir Brian, sper-losh!
I am Sir Brian
As bold as a lion
Is anyone else for a wash?’
I would roll around in delight at this picture of extrovert schadenfreude at work. Seventy years later, I decided to finish it off, thus:
One man said ‘Please, Sir,
Can I have my say?
Most Tuesdays
And on Saturday
But always on the latter day,
I wear my special suiting,
‘Cos I am SDA.
So, yes Sir, for your blipping,
Could you choose another day?’
My English master would have been disappointed. I didn’t—grow out of it, that is. In fact I got worse. It was all the fault of Ogden Nash, that great American rhymester. I never could resist:
VERSUS
The Golden Trashery
Of Ogden Nashery
The grand outrageousness of his puns was matched by his deliberate flouting of syntax
conventions and scanning; and by his manipulation of invented words to produce an end-of-sentence rhyme, often lines away from its mate.
Then there were his little pieces:
Men never make passes
At girls who wear glasses.
Parsley…
Is garsley.
The trouble with a kitten’s
THAT
Eventually it becomes a
CAT
Thus Ogden Nash on the progressive inevitability of vanishing childhood innocence and playful dependence. But Nash remains silent about the nine or so lives of adult cat-ness; tom, cool, hep, fat, and nap for example. As the poet might have put it, but didn’t:
Protection rules for Mother
SWAN,
Until one day, the cygnet’s
GONE
So Mother Swan just nods her
HEAD
‘Come on, Dad. Let’s go to
BED
‘After all,’ said Mother
HEN
‘Cyclic life means start
AGAIN’
I still laugh out loud at the Nash longer cautionary tales, mostly with stings in them. And I continue to marvel at his versatility—he might say ‘versustility’—and range of subject matter. His curiosity was insatiable. Nothing was sacred to that penetrative pen.
Yet he was never destructive, vulgar or crude.
(Unlike some pieces included here,
When even apostasy may be seen to intrude.)
Nash remains uniquely funny for his gentle ridicule of the pompous, the pretentious, the
gruesomely ordinary and the outrageously bizarre. He would have approved of calypsos and
calypsonians who can be sharp, bitter and iconoclastic.
I’m glad I’ve got that off my chest. Now I have to distance myself from it. Someone said that a sense of indebtedness is the most corrupting form of human relationship. Distorts everything and satisfies no one. Especially if a second-rate acolyte is thought to be clutching at the coat-tails of the inspired and sucking at the cloth of that inspiration.
So if the fault is by distant derivation that of Ogden Nash, the excuse for this claim is the old one about imitation being the sincerest form of flattery. Or something like that.
I wish it were indeed so. But Ogden Nash is inimitable. The Doggerel Ditties that follow are relieved in their pedestrian parochialism by one or two which, in places, are less bad than the others. Let me know when you find one. It would be a kindness. As that English teacher also once wrote:
‘HE IS TRYING—VERY’
So you have been warned. If you are nonetheless determined on mindless masochism, proceed now. The contents eschew strict chronological sequence and are accordingly without opus numbers. The place and date of composition are laid bare when I remembered to do so. And footnotes hopefully make clear the obscure for new players. Hopefully, because footnotes are often the ultimate refuge for the intellectually confused and muddled writer.
One or two cuckoos have found their way into the doggerel nest.
They may serve as light relief from the rest.
The rhyme was intended as you will.....
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Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940012915306 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | PanOrama Publishing |
| Publication date: | 06/01/2009 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 212 |
| File size: | 931 KB |
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