Review by Booklist Review
Thirty-four years ago, Ogden Nash's daughters published I Wouldn't Have Missed It, a handsome, chronological (by book publication) selection of more than 400 of his completely convivial though utterly personal poems. In the wake of Douglas Parker's Ogden Nash: The Life and Work of America's Laureate of Light Verse (2005), its publisher asked them to do the job again. Their response includes 548 poems, this time sorted into topical sections: Family Matters, The Sporting Life, A Nashional Menagerie (look here for his rhinoceros, eel, fly, jellyfish, and other less-often-quoted but equally quotable beast portraits), He and She, and 13 others. If specific references and objects in the poems show their age, the distinctive, often hilariously forced rhymes and rhythmic vitality, despite the lack of any definite metric (for the latter, Nash is justly famed; Whitman, go eat your hat!), remain inimitably delightful. Sure, some poems are better than others, but most are better than just good, and there are so many of them!--Olson, Ray Copyright 2007 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
