June 7, 2005
Nash
Ogden Nash made a living by writing short, silly poems that were witty, unconventional, and respectful of the reader’s intelligence. So said a NY Times review of a new Nash biography and then quoted one:
Let’s think of eggs.
They have no legs.
Chickens come from eggs
But they have legs.
The plot thickens;
Eggs come from chickens,
But have no legs under ‘em.
What a conundrum!
The biographer writes that the poem is accompanied by an anecdote. The sultry actress/singer Dorothy Lamour of all the old Hope and Crosby road pictures and South Pacific sagas refused to read the rhyme on a radio show because she apparently thought that “conundrum” was a dirty word.
Times change, I suppose. Nowadays, I suspect that most, with the possible exception of the Vatican, would probably wonder what’s sarong with that.