At the present writing Mr. Ogden Nash is a household word in this country—at any rate, an apartmenthold word. His verse is quoted, often in mild distortion, much quicker than you can say Jack Robinson or Lewis Carroll or Dorothy Parker. He and his rhymes together have become a national institution. So when a new collection of Nash comes off the assembly line the reviewer has only to look it over, note the modern streamlining, the latest gadgets—like the limick—the chromium plate, the hydramatic and lodramatic features, the rear-view wipers, and shuffle together his brief report. It is just about as simple as that….
"Versus" is the latest Nash, and it comes as something of an unabsorbed shock that this is his first book of new verse in six years. The publishers say that it contains about one hundred poems never before confined between the covers of a book. They are wrong on two counts. These are verses, not poems … and a lot of them will never be confined between the covers of a book. Opening a book by Ogden Nash is something like opening a bottle of champagne: (1) it makes a pleasant noise, and (2) it is highly charged with volatile stuff. All of his verse is set in italics, a more volatile type than roman. A stanza practically takes off the page as you look at it. Nothing in Nash is cribb'd and nothing is confined….
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