Customer Reviews

The Best of Ogden Nash

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Over five hundred verses gathered from a wide collection of Nash's poems results in this, a definitive Nash anthology suitable not just for college-level poetry libraries, but for general-interest lending collections. While published works comprise the bulk of this anthology, some are lesser-known works which came to light in the Nash collection at the University of Texas at Austin, and from family letters and papers, making for an outstanding, rare collection of works essential for any definitive poetry library.

The writings of Ogden Nash have a unique rhythm and tempo. The humor, and style, coupled with subtle sagacity makes for a wonderful read, both aloud and to oneself. This should be required reading at all levels of education, so that students can see and hear what can really be done with words.
TONY HOROWITZ

I had encountered Nash's poetry some years back and had an LP of The Carnival of the Animals poem read by Noel Coward with his special enunciation of all the words. Since then, I have been searching for a printed copy and this book does it for me. Nash's menagerie of animals is fun.

This is a great selection of Nash's stuff, including a any number of items that were completely new to me. However, the formatting is awful. The book has been done as a series of images, which means that the Kindle type size adjustment key does nothing. Many pages are in such small type that a lot of people will find them unreadable or very burdensome to read. Being well into middle age and myopic from childhood, I had to take off my glasses and hold the Kindle about 6 inches from my nose. Not a pleasant reading experience.

I have loved Ogden Nash poetry and stories since I was a kid when I found an old dusty book of his in a used bookstore. My mom used to take me there while I protested. I peeked inside that book, and to my surprise, I thought the poems were really entertaining and insightful. I have loved his work ever since. I received the book I am reviewing recently as a gift. It has a great variety of his work, long and short. I enjoy picking it up and reading parts at random. His writing is fun, accessible and entertaining.

What a fun collection. You can open it randomly to most any page and have a fun read. Some of the poems have aged better than others, but even those are a slice of history. I especially enjoy the ones about New York City. They are glimpses into how things used to be in my home town.

Ogden Nash was read by many in the early 20th century and forgotten. He is still a funny poet who get his point across in verse. How wonderful if children could still quote from this unique American poet.

Ogden Nash is a wizard with his words, there is no doubt about that. If you are looking for a book to randomly flip open, laugh and be enlightened, look no further, you have found it. Has all his funniest poetry. Highly recommended if you like poetry. Or fun.

I like Ogden Nash, but this book may be complete but it is difficult to read and even more difficult to navigate. Some of the type faces are so microscopic that they approach the unreadable. There is no interactive table of contents or index. You have to scroll through the book to find a poem that you like.

I was looking forward to the availability of Ogden Nash on the Kindle. The implementation is sadly lacking however in that the verses are a series of images of text rather than actual text. This does not allow for searching for a section of verse.

Even worse, the verse images display the text in different sizes from page to page and within the same page. Some of the images display text that proved too small to read comfortably. This renders an unacceptable percentage of the material unreadable. Amazon should pull this version from the Kindle store.