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With the buzz over Sex and the City (did you take Stacy Conradt’s Sex quiz yet?) I thought it would be interesting to take a step back in time and listen to a poem about women written by Ogden Nash, read by Ogden Nash. Keep in mind as you’re listening to this that the person he’s speaking to from the BBC is female (you’ll hear her reaction toward the end of the clip – classic mid-20th century reaction, eh?).
If you’re not familiar with Mr. Nash, he was a Harvard dropout who lived in Baltimore most of his life. In fact, you might know his famously pithy line: “I could have loved New York had I not loved Balti-more.” Yes, that was Ogden Nash, as was this Prohibition-era classic: “Candy is dandy but liquor is quicker.”
In addition to poetry, Nash wrote the lyrics and co-wrote the libretto (with S. J. Perelman) for the awesome Kurt Weill musical One Touch of Venus.
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Another interesting fact of note is that although he spent little time living in Boston (or by extension Cambridge), he deliberately appropriated the accent and diction of a Boston Brahmin accent which can be heard all of his readings and most of his interviews.
In my opinion he is one of the finest humorists of the 20th Century and it is a shame he is not more widely read.
posted by Peter G. on 1-8-2009 at 5:22 pm