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A Whale is a Whale
—after Ogden Nash
While laughing aloud at Ogden’s smart rhymes,
I was struck by a way to interpret his lines.
Though Nash’s reputation was not as a Buddhist,
An ode to signlessness might be the truest.
We see how the author takes pains to adjure
That things are what they are, and of this we are sure.
That they’re not what they’re not, we ordinarily admit,
And calling them otherwise won’t change things a bit.
And though all speech, in truth, is made up of signs,
We might with reality keep roughly aligned,
And not wax too eloquent in our description,
Lest preposterous analogies give poor Nash a conniption.
Towards grand embellishment let us forgo our attraction;
Perhaps simple description is our best course of action!
This may be why haiku, though many find them terse,
Towards metaphor and simile are highly averse.
If words were reality, as Sawaki said in his turn,
We’d saying saki get drunk, and saying fire be burned.
That’s not how it is. Yet poems we still read,
Searching for beauty in words, speech and deed.
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Jonathan Bear is psychiatrist who lives in rural North Florida.
Johnathan, I am a fan of Ogden Nash and loved “Purple Cow.” Simple description likely is the best description. There are many parodies of his poems.
Fans of Ogden Nash will probably enjoy Gelett Burgess, some of whose books are available at Project Gutenberg. I’m enjoying one now.
I have not read much of Ogden Nash but I enjoyed your poem despite that. I think you have given yourself a difficult task and done an excellent job of it.