NONSENSE VERSE

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Down Memory Lane






Sometimes they made a lot of sense




When I first went to college, I was introduced to a number of new authors (that is, new to me), like Dorothy Parker, Jerome K.Jerome, Edward Lear, Stephen Leacock and Ogden Nash. Later when I went to Madras Christian College for my postgraduate studies, I read more of these authors.

Rhyme without reason

Many of these books were available in a couple of libraries like The British Council Library, and the USIS. They also could be bought in the Moore Market quite cheap. And so I got familiar with these books of nonsense that nevertheless did seem to have a lot of sense.

Stephen Leacock’s “Literary Lapses” and “Nonsense Novels” were hilarious. There were also some very funny books of limericks. And then there was Ogden Nash. He wrote nonsense verse that had us doubled up in laughter. He very cleverly rhymed as in his ‘Biological Reflection’: “A girl whose cheeks are covered with paint/ Has an advantage with me over one whose aint”. We quoted this couplet whenever we saw any girl of our college using excessive make-up.

All of us had studied a book of poetry called The Golden Treasury, edited by Francis Palgrave. So when a collection of Ogden Nash’s verses were brought out under the title “The Golden Trashery of Ogden Nashery”, we were greatly amused.


Sighting the retreat

At about this time some college girls started wearing jeans. Girls those days were not slim and tall like the girls today. Some were quite buxom. So we enjoyed Nash’s “What’s the use?” “Sure, deck your lower limbs in pants/ Yours are the limbs, my sweeting/ You look divine as you advance-/ Have you seen yourself retreating?” As someone else had said, it looked like two little boys fighting under a blanket. Anyway we started noticing the ‘retreating’ and got a lot of fun out of it.

We even got a new perspective on babies. “A bit of talcum/ Is always walcum”. After reading this, every time we saw a baby, we started wondering whether the talcum had been sufficient.

And then there was a boost to the male of the species – ‘The turkey’. “There is nothing more perky / Than a masculine turkey ./ When he struts he struts/ With no ifs or buts./ When his face is apoplectic / His harem grows hectic, / And when he gobbles/ Their universe wobbles.

When we are troubled by a fly buzzing about our faces causing us to wave it away in quick slapping movements, we think of Ogden Nash’s ‘Fly’ – “God in his wisdom made the fly/ And then he forgot to tell us why.” Thus the fly becomes a major undisclosed mystery.

Perhaps the most well known short verse of Ogden Nash is: ‘Reflections on Ice-breaking’ – “Candy/ Is dandy/ But liquor/ Is quicker”

And here is a cure for snoring. “There was an old man of Calcutta,/ Who coated his tonsils with butta,/ Thus converting his snore/ From a thunderous roar/ To a soft, oleaginous mutta.” Butter makes all the difference to a snore.

“ The turtle lives twixt plated decks/ Which practically conceal its sex./ I think it clever of the turtle/ In such a fix to be so fertile.” The turtle therefore can teach us a thing or two.

All these things seen above are quite clever and ingenious. But as Nash himself says in his ‘Reflection on Ingenuity’, “Here’s a good rule of thumb;/ Too clever is dumb”.

So let’s not be too clever and descend into dumbness.




J.VASANTHAN


Date:02/10/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/thehindu/mp/2008/10/02/stories/2008100250440400.htm

(e-mail: jvasanthan@sancharnet.in)
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