Ogden Nash - Other Poems

Other Poems

Nash was a baseball fan, and he wrote a poem titled "Line-Up for Yesterday", an alphabetical poem listing baseball immortals. Published in Sport magazine in January 1949, the poem pays tribute to the baseball greats and to his own fanaticism, in alphabetical order. Here is a sampling from his A to Z list:

C is for Cobb, Who grew spikes and not corn, And made all the basemen Wish they weren't born.

D is for Dean, The grammatical Diz, When they asked, Who's the tops? Said correctly, I is.

E is for Evers, His jaw in advance; Never afraid To Tinker with Chance.

F is for Fordham And Frankie and Frisch; I wish he were back With the Giants, I wish.

He also wrote a poem called "all about people "which criticises the humanity that is employers who illtreat others. Nash particularly loved Baltimore sports teams.

Nash wrote humorous poems for each movement of the Camille Saint-Saëns orchestral suite The Carnival of the Animals, which are sometimes recited when the work is performed. The original recording of this version was made by Columbia Records in the 1940s, with Noël Coward reciting the poems and Andre Kostelanetz conducting the orchestra.