Tag: Ogden Nash

poetry appreciation

apokalyptíria

Jan 28, 2021 #apocalypse, #apokalyptíria, #coronavirus, #Dorothy Parker, #fear, #Fire and Ice, #Frost, #frustration, #hate, #hatred, #hope, #hopefulness, #Nash, #Ogden Nash, #Oscar Wilde, #pandemic, #Parker, #Revelation, #RObert Frost, #sovid 19, #the news, #Wilde by Lucy Crispin

There’s a lot of fear, frustration and anger flying about at the moment, and this last year we’ve read many headlines and seen photos and footage we never want to have seen. Since the beginning of this strange and disturbing month one of the poems echoing in my head has been Frost’s ‘Fire and Ice‘ (click the red arrow by the title if you’d like to be read to). Does it resonate with you?

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poetry appreciation

..something completely different

Mar 19, 2020 #42 group, #a clean conscience never relaxes, #Charlotte Fortune, #comedy, #comic, #Cope, #Fortune, #humorous, #humour, #laughter, #Nash, #Ogden Nash, #pls stop sendg msg2ths, #poem, #poem on the theme of humour, #poems, #poetry, #reading, #reading together, #recognition, #verse for a birthday card, #we read to know we are not alone, #Wendy Cope by Lucy Crispin

At the 42 group this month (glad we made the most of it as it’s probably going to be a while…) by special request of one of the regulars we had an evening of poetry which makes us smile or laugh. It was just lovely: a different kind of light in the darkness. Wendy Cope featured a lot, as you might imagine, and her ‘Poem on the theme of humour’ reminded us of how po-faced it’s possible to be about Serious Literature and the Function of Art. ((I’d love to give you a link to the poem, but I can only find it on The Telegraph‘s site and I’ll to leave it to you as to whether you want to get involved in those particular strong toils…)

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poetry appreciation

‘there’s nothing either good or bad,

Jan 2, 2020 #fellowship, #hope, #hopes, #intentions, #Jackie Kay, #Matt Goodfellow, #New Year, #Ogden Nash, #poem, #poems, #poetry, #potential, #promise by Lucy Crispin

but thinking makes it so’. A trio of poems which see the coming of the new year from very different places. First, we have Ogden Nash’s ‘Good riddance, but now what‘, which finds the poet in characteristically wry mood. The apparent cosiness of the opening invitation—’Come children, gather round my knee’—is soon dispelled with the imagery of something ‘about to burst/… like a time bomb in the hall’. It brings to mind Dorothy Parker’s notorious way of greeting visitors or answering the phone: ‘What fresh hell is this?’. I love the fact that here Nash has the clock ‘crouching, dark and small’—small, as a bomb is, in relation to the size of the destruction it can wreak. Assume brace position. Be ready to duck. I can certainly recognise in myself a mood where I look at the future with that sort of attitude.

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