Custard, in Very Good Company

posted by Andrea Perry

Who has ever had so much fun with words??? Anything I have ever read  by Ogden Nash has blown me away, so it was very hard to narrow things down to a single book, but I'd probably choose Custard and Company. Custard is a selection of Nash's poems from his many other works.  For anyone not familiar with this self-proclaimed "worsifier", surely you've heard that ..."Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker?"

From Cricket of Carador to Parents Keep Out: Elderly Poems for Youngerly Readers, Nash never ceases to be clever, amusing, and smart, and I am so very jealous. Have you ever heard a cow described so perfectly?

 

The cow is of the bovine ilk:

One end is moo, the other, milk.

 

Or an eel?

I don't mind eels

Except as meals.

And the way they feels.

A hippopotamus?

Behold the hippopotamus!

We laugh at how he looks to us,

And yet in moments dank and grim

I wonder how we look to him.

Peace, peace, thou hippopotamus!

We really look all right to us,

As you no doubt delight the eye

Of other hippopotami.

Is "hippopotami" a correct plural? Do we care? It should be!  

And finally, one of my all time favorites, The Octopus:

Tell me, O Octopus, I begs,

Is those things arms, or is they legs?

I marvel at thee, Octopus:

If I were thou, I'd call me Us.

His rhyming is brilliant, hilarious, and not apt to be found in any rhyming dictionary that I know...boomerang with Kangaroo meringue? Sepia and creepier?  Dolphin and golphin?  Polish and rigamarolish?  

If you have never experienced the pleasure of his verse, pick up a copy of anything Nash sometime very soon.  You won't be disappointed.