From the modern-day master of the epigram:

The other thing about epigrams (which I forgot to mention yesterday) is that when they’re done a-right, further comment is superfluous.

— Thomas

Minstrels Links

“Common Cold” is a wonderful piece of hypochondriac hyperbole; the source of that immortal phrase ‘The Führer of the Streptococcracy’, it’s archived at
poem #325. The commentary accompanying the above poem also quotes (in entirety) several of Nash’s better known short pieces, including “The Cobra” and his “Reflection on a Wicked World”.

“P G Wooster, Just as he Useter” is the tribute of one comic genius to another: poem #353.

while “Kipling’s Vermont” is a very different, but equally accomplished piece of sly satire: poem #388.

“Will Consider Situation”, poem #542, showcases Nash’s gift for the long line.

And finally, “The Sniffle”, poem #625, is just plain delightful.

Biography

 b. Aug. 19, 1902, Rye, N.Y., U.S.
 d. May 19, 1971, Baltimore, Md.

in full FREDERIC OGDEN NASH, American writer of humorous poetry who won a large following for his audacious verse.

After a year at Harvard University (1920-21), Nash held a variety of jobs–advertising, teaching, editing, bond selling–before the success of his poetry enabled him to work full-time at it. He sold his first verse (1930) to The New Yorker, on whose editorial staff he was employed for a time. With the publication of his first collection, Hard Lines (1931), he began a 40-year career during which he produced 20 volumes of verse with such titles as The Bad Parents’ Garden of Verse (1936), I’m a Stranger Here Myself (1938), and Everyone but Thee and Me (1962). Making his home in Baltimore, he also did considerable lecturing on tours throughout the United States. He wrote the lyrics for the musicals One Touch of Venus (1943) and Two’s Company (1952), as well as several children’s books.

His rhymes are jarringly off or disconcertingly exact, and his ragged stanzas vary from lines of one word to lines that meander the length of a paragraph, often interrupted by inapposite digressions. He said he learned his prosody from the unintentional blunders of the notoriously slipshod poet Julia Moore, the “Sweet Singer of Michigan.”

– EB