Poet's Choice

Which the Chicken, Which the Egg

He drinks because she scolds, he thinks;

She thinks she scolds because he drinks;

And neither will admit what's true,

That he's a sot and she's a shrew.

The mordant quality of these poems comes from their stoic determination not to be surprised by the worst in people, including the author. That biting, skeptical, even grouchy viewpoint is not the opposite or dark underside of Nash's gift for comedy. On the contrary, the way of writing fits the worldview: The comedy of moral imperfection goes with the formal joke of lines that break rules of measure and correctness to arrive at their rhyme.

P.G. Wodehouse described himself as the performing flea of English literature. Ogden Nash, too, achieves something nimble but small in scope. It would be wrong, though, to call that smallness "modest," much less "jovial" or "warm." It is based on a convinced and therefore half-forgiving solipsism. He writes, in "Compliments of a Friend":

For every sin that I produce

Kind Me can find some soft excuse,

And when I blow a final gasket,

Who but Me will share my casket?

Beside us, Pythias and Damon

Were just two unacquainted laymen.

Sneer not, for if you answer true,

Don't you feel that way about You?

Like all excellent comedy, Ogden Nash's verses, however charming, have a distinct unsettling element.

(Ogden Nash's poems "Lines to a World-Famous Poet Who Failed to Complete a World-Famous Poem or Come Clean, Mr. Guest," "Old Men," "Which the Chicken, Which the Egg," and "Compliments of a Friend" can be found in "Candy Is Dandy." Carlton Books Ltd. Copyright 1994)