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Poetry: January 08, 2014 Issue [#6094]

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Poetry


 This week: Ogden Nash
  Edited by: Stormy Lady Author IconMail Icon
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Table of Contents

1. About this Newsletter
2. A Word from our Sponsor
3. Letter from the Editor
4. Editor's Picks
5. A Word from Writing.Com
6. Ask & Answer
7. Removal instructions

About This Newsletter

This is poetry from the minds and the hearts of poets on Writing.Com. The poems I am going to be exposing throughout this newsletter are ones that I have found to be, very visual, mood setting and uniquely done. Stormy Lady Author Icon


Word from our sponsor



Letter from the editor

Winter Complaint
by Ogden Nash

Now when I have a cold
I am careful with my cold,
I consult a physician
And I do as I am told.
I muffle up my torso
In woolly woolly garb,
And I quaff great flagons
Of sodium bicarb.
I munch on aspirin,
I lunch on water,
And I wouldn’t dream of osculating
Anybody’s daughter,
And to anybody’s son
I wouldn’t say howdy,
For I am a sufferer
Magna cum laude.
I don’t like germs,
But I’ll keep the germs I’ve got.
Will I take a chance of spreading them?
Definitely not.
I sneeze out the window
And I cough up the flue,
And I live like a hermit
Till the germs get through.
And because I’m considerate,
Because I’m wary,
I am treated by my friends
Like Typhoid Mary.

Now when you have a cold
You are careless with your cold,
You are cocky as a gangster
Who has just been paroled.
You ignore your physician,
You eat steaks and oxtails,
You stuff yourself with starches,
You drink lots of cocktails,
And you claim that gargling
Is a time of waste,
And you won’t take soda
For you don’t like the taste,
And you prowl around parties
Full of selfish bliss,
And greet your hostess
With a genial kiss.
You convert yourself
Into a deadly missle,
You exhale Hello’s
Like a steamboat wistle.
You sneeze in the subway
And you cough at dances,
And let everybody else
Take their own good chances.
You’re a bronchial boor,
A bacterial blighter,
And you get more invitations
Than a gossip writer.

Yes, your throat is froggy,
And your eyes are swimmy,
And you hand is clammy,
And you nose is brimmy,
But you woo my girls
And their hearts you jimmy
While I sit here
With the cold you gimmy.

Crossing The Border
by Ogden Nash

Senescence begins
And middle age ends
The day your descendents
Outnumber your friends.

On August 19, 1902 Frederick Ogden Nash was born in Rye, New York. Nash’s father owned an import and export business that kept Nash moving around during his childhood. He for the most part grew up in Rye, New York and Savannah, Georgia. Nash did his studying at St. George's School in Rhode Island and briefly attended Harvard University. After leaving school Nash started writing advertising copy for Doubleday Page Publishing, New York, in 1925. It was while working for Doubleday he wrote his first children’s book “The Cricket of Garador” published in 1925.

After six years as an editor at the Doubleday, Nash claimed, one day he just started scribbling humorous lines on a paper, which he crumpled up and threw away. It was only after some thought on the matter that he went back to wastebasket and retrieved the piece of paper which became his first piece of published verse, Spring Comes to Murray Hill, in1930. In 1932, Nash left the Doubleday to work at The New Yorker as an editor. As Nash’s popularity grew Nash insisted his writing was all by accident. While at the New Yorker Nash also did a radio quiz show "Information Please.” He eventually focused on fulltime writing and published over twenty-four books of poetry and prose.

Nash quickly became one of the most quoted poets of his time with lines like this; "candy is dandy but liquor is quicker." His quirkiness and puns were catchy for people of all ages and his popularity continued to grow. He work was not only humorous but in its own way rang true to the human experience. People of all walks of life could find things in common with his wit. Throughout his career he did a variety of publications from the Boston Herald to the Saturday Review of literature. Nash wrote "Reflection on a Wicked World" and "Purity is obscurity,” among many other great pieces of work. He wrote poetry almost all the way up to his death.

Ogden Nash died on May 19, 1971 at Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins Hospital after suffering from a sever aggravation to improperly prepared food he ate that interfered with his Crohn’s Disease. He is buried at East Side Cemetery in North Hampton, New Hampshire.


First Child ... Second Child
by Ogden Nash

FIRST

Be it a girl, or one of the boys,
It is scarlet all over its avoirdupois,
It is red, it is boiled; could the obstetrician
Have possibly been a lobstertrician?
His degrees and credentials were hunky-dory,
But how's for an infantile inventory?
Here's the prodigy, here's the miracle!
Whether its head is oval or spherical,
You rejoice to find it has only one,
Having dreaded a two-headed daughter or son;
Here's the phenomenon all complete,
It's got two hands, it's got two feet,
Only natural, but pleasing, because
For months you have dreamed of flippers or claws.
Furthermore, it is fully equipped:
Fingers and toes with nails are tipped;
It's even got eyes, and a mouth clear cut;
When the mouth comes open the eyes go shut,
When the eyes go shut, the breath is loosed
And the presence of lungs can be deduced.
Let the rockets flash and the cannon thunder,
This child is a marvel, a matchless wonder.
A staggering child, a child astounding,
Dazzling, diaperless, dumbfounding,
Stupendous, miraculous, unsurpassed,
A child to stagger and flabbergast,
Bright as a button, sharp as a thorn,
And the only perfect one ever born.

SECOND

Arrived this evening at half-past nine.
Everybody is doing fine.
Is it a boy, or quite the reverse?
You can call in the morning and ask the nurse.

Lines On Facing Forty
by Ogden Nash

I have a bone to pick with Fate.
Come here and tell me, girlie,
Do you think my mind is maturing late,
Or simply rotted early?


Thank you all!
Stormy Lady Author Icon

A logo for Poetry Newsletter Editors
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Editor's Picks


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The winners of "Stormy's poetry newsletter & contestOpen in new Window. [ASR] are:

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#1968293 by Not Available.


It's New Year's,
time for hopes and no fears.
Maybe, next year I'll follow my heart.

Each December, I say to myself, I will start;
each February, the resolutions depart!

Last year was filled with lots of misses;
time to make new wishes;
Promises


 A New Year With Old Resolutions Open in new Window. (E)
Why do we repeat the same resolutions year after year
#1966657 by Prosperous Snow celebrating Author IconMail Icon


Each year at midnight
on December thirty-first
a new birth is announced
.

Each year despite
the lessons of previous New Years,
we again
proclaim personal improvement goals
and ignore the shards
of last year's broken dreams.

Each year we promise
that this year will be different
and each resolution
will be kept,
while deep within
we hear the whispers of our doubts
and the echoes of our fears,
as they become
voices of our destruction
repeating last year's nullification's:
"Maybe this year will be different,
but if not
there is always
next year."



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These are the rules:

1) You must use the words I give in a poem or prose with no limits on length.

2) The words can be in any order and anywhere throughout the poem and can be any form of the word.

3) All entries must be posted in your portfolio and you must post the link in this forum, "Stormy's poetry newsletter & contestOpen in new Window. [ASR] by February 1, 2014.

4) The winner will get 3000 gift points and the poem will be displayed in this section of the newsletter the next time it is my turn to post (February 5, 2014)

The words are:


stripe shiniest oldie crushing commitments muttered spouts romantics


*Delight* Good luck to all *Delight*

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 Invalid Item Open in new Window.
This item number is not valid.
#1970277 by Not Available.

 Invalid Item Open in new Window.
This item number is not valid.
#1968614 by Not Available.

 Invalid Item Open in new Window.
This item number is not valid.
#1970011 by Not Available.

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 Invalid Item Open in new Window.
This item number is not valid.
#1969472 by Not Available.

 Invalid Item Open in new Window.
This item number is not valid.
#1969269 by Not Available.

 Invalid Item Open in new Window.
This item number is not valid.
#1969681 by Not Available.

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 Invalid Item Open in new Window.
This item number is not valid.
#1970293 by Not Available.

 Invalid Item Open in new Window.
This item number is not valid.
#1969462 by Not Available.

 Invalid Item Open in new Window.
This item number is not valid.
#1970031 by Not Available.

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