When a new poet comes along, the least a reviewer can do is to find method in his madness—and write a paragraph on the technique of it. This—now that our chortles of enjoyment have partially subsided—we shall undertake.
Briefly and specifically, what Ogden Nash does is to take words apart to see what makes them tick, and put them together so that they click. And not necessarily in the condition in which he found them. Any one who is under the impression that the English language is not sufficiently flexible should study "Hard Lines." It demonstrates that our mother tongue can be made to behave in a manner hardly becoming a mother, but irreproachably amusing. Here the English language is not only flexible; it is double-jointed, ambidextrous, telescopic, kaleidoscopic, and slightly demented. If this isn't flexibility, then a coil spring made out of piano wire is a ramrod.
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