In the following essay, Crandell examines Nash's use of the “poet-fool” persona in his humorous verse.

In the excerpt below, Crandell examines the relationship between humor and art in Nash's poetry.

In the following excerpt, Hasley examines the literary merits of Nash's poetry, evaluating themes, seriousness of subject matter, consistency in composition and editing, and Nash's elaborately artificial voice of naïveté.

In the excerpt below, MacLeish argues that Nash did not write "light verse," but rather invented a unique, inimitable form that represented his times.

In the following negative review, Disch notes the limited nature of Nash's verse, asserting that “measured against the general level of accomplishment in any standard anthology of humorous verse, Nash's limitations are glaringly evident.”

In the following review, Untermeyer offers criticism of Nash's technique, contending that the rhyme scheme and long, asymmetrical lines obscure serious themes in his poetry.

In the following review, Ciardi offers a mixed review of Custard and Company.

In the following review of Nash's collected poems, Kermode deems Nash's short, humorous verses tedious yet amusing.

Among the writers of humorous poetry today, undoubtedly the most popular is Mr. Ogen Nash. People hunt out poems of his in the New Yorker or the Saturday Evening Post and read them to guests. His books have now and then made best-seller lists. At times, too, he has been starred—as a reader of his own pieces—on radio programs which entertain millions of people. One of the pieces in Mr. Ogden Nash's book, I'm a Stranger Here Myself, deals with a lawyer named Ballantine, whose life ...

In the following review of You Can't Get There From Here, Redman reiterates critics' inability to analyze or categorize Nash's verse, while emphasizing his skill in the traditional verse forms that are often overshadowed by his renowned unconventional style.

In the excerpt below, McCord praises Family Reunion as a collection that appeals to all ages, and feels that it is representative of the body of Nash's work.

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 hy...

Here, Nichols contends that in The Private Dining Room Nash's style and subject matter matures, and, in an interview with the poet, discusses the factors that influenced his development

Below, American poet David McCord evaluates Nash's highly original voice and inventive genius, and compares Nash to other established American poets such as Robert Frost, E. B. White, e. e. cummings, and W. H. Auden.

Below, Frankenberg analyzes Nash's theme of family as addressed in Family Reunion, and comments upon his irregular use of meter.

In this review, the critic lauds Nash's abilities as an ironist and philosopher, in addition to his talent as a humorist.

In the following essay, Cottle lauds Nash's humorous verse, contending that “he is genuinely observant of what is abidingly and harmlessly funny, he is not sick or bitter, he uses for uproarious ends the methods of poetry, the vision and vicissitudes of the poetic life.”

In the following review of Good Intentions, Tinker comments upon Nash's insight into human nature and his ability to succinctly, accurately, and wittily incorporate those observations into his poems.

In the following excerpt, Whittemore singles out Nash for his distinct verse and voice, the qualities by which Whittemore measures 20th-century poets, and describes Nash's legacy to the genre of American light verse.

The latest collection of Ogden Nash's hymns to Neuros ["Good Intentions"] shows no advance or mutation in technique, but it reflects a more mellow personality, a less subjective approach to life, and a deadlier, deeper wit. Humorists have a melancholy habit of anticipating old age, and although Nash cannot be much more than forty, he has definitely entered what literary historians of the future will no doubt term his "middle period." Two years ago all of Nash's earl...

  I tore the paper from this volume, from my perfecto jogged an ash,  And, lo and behold, the book was "The Primrose Path" by Ogden Nash!  Now far be it from me to titter at your  Ideas of what constitutes Literature,  But if anybody asks me anxiously who can rescue humorous poetry from the ash can,  I shall unhesitatingly answer, "Nash can."  I hav...

If we are to measure poets by their distinctiveness—and for better or worse the achieving of distinctiveness is the raison d'être for most 20th-century American poetry—it simply won't do to think of Ogden Nash as a minor figure…. [His] death in 1971 left us with acres of Ogden Nashery as well as with a clear—maybe too clear—vision of how the art of light verse should be perpetrated. He created a body of work that went triumphantly against the prevailin...

[You Can't Get There from Here] is another book by Ogden Nash, a volume that has volume, unlike those which enclose a dozen or half-dozen or even a single poem between boards. Nash has been versifying for nearly three decades, and a long list of sizable books testifies to his industry. He has mastered a craft and made a body of techniques very much his own. The unexpected rhyme becomes expected, but it never turns out to be exactly predictable, so it still carries a punch. The lines bounce, but not t...

In the following review of Many Long Years Ago, Maloney describes Nash as a poet of the cynical generation produced by the Depression, who possesses the ability to make readers laugh at the foibles and inconveniences of modern life.

At first glance there is no resemblance between "Family Reunion," Ogden Nash's latest collection of verses, and T. S. Eliot's play of some years back, "The Family Reunion." With second sight, however, and something of a shiver, I have apprehended the striking of at least one identical theme: "I regret that before people can be reformed they have to be sinners." The theme is struck, yes; so hard it never shows its head again. For Nash's developme...

[We] feel no hesitation in affirming that in these artless lyrics of [Hard Lines] Mr. Nash is also "a good wrietor." In case—as doesn't seem possible—any reader has so far missed acquaintance with the casual Muse of Mr. Nash, we may say that, for one thing, he has turned a new trick in light verse with the aberration of his rhymes…. But there is quite a bit more to Mr. Nash than that. There is his whole point of view, which seems to us so eminently sane and honest t...

Remembering all the praise that has been spread over Ogden Nash's seven preceding volumes by uncritical admirers and admiring critics—this reviewer having placed himself in both categories—and partially disarmed by the present deprecatory title, it must be admitted that "Good Intentions," the Master's latest collection, is (alas) far from his best. All the favorite Nashian devices are here: the oddly distorted but somehow matching lines, the new and old words startl...

In the following review of Hard Lines, Bell comments on Nash's creative vocabulary and structure in his poetry, as well as his position in relation to "traditional" poets.

["I'm a Stranger Here Myself" is easy] on one's immediate reflexes, it has … cunningly delayed surprises, it has inexhaustible resources and it takes its time to display them. It comes, as I think, at a critical time. Every one has made capital out of Nash's original eccentricities in rhyme. Its schema is well known: is there a rhyme for "gospel"? Of course, it's Pospel. His scherzos and scherzandos are less well understood. They consist of maki...

In the following review of The Primrose Path, Bell praises Nash's trailblazing verse and examines several themes present in the collection.

I think practically all members of families except the dog or the cat will want to read ["Family Reunion"], and having read it, will want to meet the author. There may be deeper American poets—though this book is very wise—but surely there cannot be more completely beguiling ones. It is almost a pity that Ogden Nash is most famous for his ingenuity with grace-note rhymes, subtle manhandlings of words so that they are made to fit as rhymes where Webster had not so intended. For hi...

Judged by the contents of ["I'm A Stranger Here Myself"], Mr. Nash is about halfway on his journey [from Park Avenue to Main Street]. He is getting closer and closer to the fundamental stuff of middle-class American life, and farther away from the artificialities which prompted his first work. He will never be in the same league with Edgar Guest, but he has definitely taken up with the suburbanite who catches the 5:15, and will no more be seen among those folks, who, as he himself testi...

Nash is the laureate of a generation which had to develop its own wry, none-too-joyful humor as the alternative to simply lying down on the floor and screaming. His ragged verse is remarkably like Ring Lardner's unpruned prose in effect—a catalogue of the annoying trifles that constitute our contemporary civilization, set down with a friendly leer. Lardner wrote about prohibition, golf, the stock market, Americans traveling abroad, million-dollar prizefights and similar nostalgic nuisances; Na...

In the following review, the critic provides a laudatory assessment of Nash's selected poems.

This is no time to sell Nash short. He is still fundamentally and magnificently unsound. "The Primrose Path" riots with authentic blossoms from the Nashochistic garden of verse. And some stuff, of course, that should go right on down that path to the appointed bonfire. For in the past year the Old Master has not been nodding. He has, if anything, been staying up too late, writing, writing, writing to fill cavities in the pages of beautiful letters. He reminds one of the space-writer who took u...

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 ...

For some time now the well of American humour has been drying up. Benchley is dead, Perelman stale, Dorothy Parker no longer seems to favour us; only the cartoonists and one minor poet flow on happily. In his last book, Ogden Nash achieved at least one poem that seems likely to outlast the dust covers, A Carol for Children. The title poem of his new collection, The Private Dining Room, is certainly another. It ranks with the best of Betjeman in charming dexterity. The rhymes, though unexpected, have none of...

In the following mixed review, Merriam contends that “Nash is a champion wit and social commentator at the upper level, but he becomes condescending in his new narrative poem for the little ones.”

In the following review, Clayton offers a positive review of Santa Go Home.

In the following review, the critic asserts that Nash might be read as a satirist as well as a poet.

Mr. Nash deserves well of the Republic. He has given it another good book. May garlands and hosannahs and things attend his way. In the past, he has tormented the language of Manhattan into some of the most flagrant and beguiling lyrics of our time. He has done things to words, that would make Joyce shudder and turn away and say: "Not that, not that!" In "Happy Days" (heartily dedicated to the general proposition: "Far less malice toward none") there is not a chemic...

In the following review, the critic offers a mixed assessment of The Untold Adventures of Santa Claus.

Ogden Nash is the only American except Walt Whitman who has created a new poetic form and has imposed it on the world. The Nashean stanza was foreshadowed, to be sure, by Swift and Gilbert, but then America was foreshadowed before Columbus…. Our author's technique deserves more scholarly analysis than it has received. It depends essentially on rhyme. While most modern poets have been discarding rhyme as an undue restriction on inspiration, Nash recognizes in his readers a delight matching his ...

In the following review, the anonymous reviewer provides a laudatory assessment of There's Always Another Windmill.

Clearly Ogden Nash is God's gift to the United States. While writers of dismally serious intent are a dime a dozen, a genuine comic talent is nearly priceless. Mr. Nash is our best literary comedian since Will Rogers. He has become, in a strictly Shakespearean sense, America's number one fool, though in any other sense he is nobody's fool. Mr. Nash's extraordinary faculty for verbal pyrotechnics is happily employed in devising unheard-of rhymes, as when he couples "boomera...

In the following review, the critic praises the “oddball rhymes and inveterate good humor” of Marriage Lines.

Does anyone, nowadays, have to be told to walk (not run) to your nearest bookseller and purchase this latest panacea for whatever ails you? One grieves that [The Old Dog Barks Backwards] is a posthumous edition of a collection of verse by the inimitable Ogden Nash; but it is as loose and lively as he was before in all his years. He comments on the generation gap—at least, the way things are as opposed to the way things were and ought-to-be; he has two sections devoted to creatures one would never-in-...

The informing material of Ogden Nash's "Hard Lines" is the old material of two decades of American satirists. Like Mencken, Mr. Nash is anti-clerical, but a little more anti-Protestant than anti-Papist. He is also anti-work, anti-Senate, anti-aviation, anti-Tammany, anti-Rotarian, anti-vice crusading, and anti-Rudy Vallee. But if Mr. Nash is a member of the civilized minority in his hates, his technique sets him apart from the routineer methods of hawking these staple antipathies. He ha...

In the following review, the critic maintains that “this book is a boon for everyone in these troubled times.”

[Ogden Nash has lately published "Versus",] his first collection of sprung or spring-heel rhythms in six years. That has been a long time to wait. It is only eighteen years since his first little book of verse was published, and it is good to see how in that short time he has become a social necessity. He is, of course, a great temographic historian; he can remind us, better than any other writer, what has griped us in our hideous and hellbound civilization. But he plunges the needle with such...

In the following review, Lewis contends that “the word-play, the manipulation of language, is marvelous to read.”

In the following positive review of Nash's selected poems, the critic maintains that “it seems true that Nash today looms larger than we'd thought.”

In the following brief review, the critic deems Nash “inimitable.”

In the following review, the critic praises Nash's Ave Ogden!: Nash in Latin.

Well, here is Ogden Nash once more in a new selection [A Penny Saved Is Impossible]. He confirmed the existence of the absurd for us when we were young enough really to enjoy discovering there were old misifts who still laughed…. Nash once more spots his sights on the pompous, the pedantic, the arrogant, the pretentious, on the man who knows what's best for all of us, on the fraud, the fool. He once said of himself, "Being both viable and friable, I wish to prolong my existence."...

In the following review, Lenardon calls Ave Ogden!: Nash in Latin exciting.

Below, McGinley reviews The Bad Parent's Garden of Verse in verse, imitating Nash's style.