Behind the Designs:A Dash of Ogden Nash

Periodically, I like to take readers behind the designs of some of our products. Meet Ogden Nash’s Porpoise Paperweight, our 3-D tribute to an American icon of humor. I’ve asked Mim Harrison, the editor of Levenger Press, to take you behind its design.

                   - Steve

As so often happens in the design world, we were tootling down one road and found it led us to another.

Ogden Nash’s purposeful porpoise had its beginnings in the authors’ introduction of our Levenger Press book Rare Words II. At least, that was where we got our first Ogden glint in the eye.

In their introduction, our authors, Jan and Hallie Leighton, explained how they were adapting a verse form known as the clerihew to help explain the meaning of many of their rare words. Clerihews are whimsical rhymes that an Englishman named Edmund Clerihew Bentley (1875-1956) created. One of my favorite adaptations in Rare Words II is the rhyme that Jan and Hallie fashioned to describe perpending, which means to ponder:

Hamlet, perpending,
delayed sending
the evil king to kingdom come,
but finally he killed the bum.

But clerihews weren’t our authors’ only inspiration. As Hallie wrote, “Many of our rhymes are written with a nod to the Nashian spirit.”

And we at Levenger found ourselves nodding as well and saying, “Yes! Ogden Nash. We love Ogden Nash.”

Abandon spell-check—Nash is back!

For the boomers among us, Ogden Nash (1902-1971) was the funny poet we recalled our parents laughing about when we were kids. So we started down our rediscovery road, helped enormously by the collection of poems that Nash’s daughters, Linell Nash Smith and Isabel Nash Eberstadt, compiled in The Best of Ogden Nash.

It made us appreciate all over again why it was that Ogden Nash so captivated. He had a singular gift for not only rhyming words but bending them to his playful wishes—turning oughtn’t into ortant to rhyme with important. Only a master of the English language could do what he did with such grace and grin-power.

Since we know many of our customers are word lovers, we figured they may well be Nashophiles as well. So our purposeful porpoise gives you a dash of Nash, with his charming rhyme about this creature:

I kind of like the playful porpoise,
A healthy mind in a healthy corpus.
He and his cousin, the playful dolphin,
Why they like swimming like I like golphin.

We hope it also gives you a reason to smile.

                    - Mim

Sometimes by sheer serendipity the timing of a product is right. In these tough economic times, having Ogden Nash to lighten our mood can be a happy respite.  Comments? I’d love to hear your thoughts about Nash’s poetry or a favorite line or two. Just click on the Comments link below. (If you’re reading this as an email, click here and you’ll connect to Comments).

                        - Steve

Ogden Nash poem “The Porpoise” Copyright © 1941 by Ogden Nash.

Comments

[Carol Jo]

Thank you SO much for the new (to me) poetry form of the Clerihew. Good timing for such a fun plaything.

[Sandy Carlson]

Hooray!! You have hit upon one of my favorite authors. I'm well into my senior years and have been a big fan of his most of my life. Two of his poems I really like are: To A Little Boy Standing On My Shoes While I Am Wearing Them,and Miss Rafferty Wore Taffeta.Reading Mr. Nash led me to Franklin P. Adams and then to Dorothy Parker; and these delightful wits then led me to read more serious poets, and to enjoy poetry in general. Thanks for bringing back the memories.

[Laura Miller]

One of my favourite Nashisms:

The turtle lives between two decks
That carefully conceals his sex
I think it clever of the turtle
In such a fix to be so fertile.

Laura B.

[Mary Jo Groppe]

My favorite Ogdenism:
Candy is dandy.
But liquor is quicker!

[Ruth Roberson]

This is my favorite!

There is something about a martini,
A tingle remarkably pleasant;
A yellow, a mellow martini
I wish I had one at present.
There is something about a martini,
Ere the dining and dancing begin
And to tell you the truth,
It is not the vermouth--
I think that perhaps it's the gin.

[Bonnie Bauer]

Being an artist, I'm dragged now and then into parallel creative happenings, and I've been invited to several poetry slams. When this happens, someone invariably asks me to read something of my own, and when that fails, "How about something from your favorite poet?"

Time after time, I've fantasized about climbing onto a smoky, dim and somber stage after someone has been droning on about the futility of life, quietly clearing my throat, and launching into--

I think that I shall never see
A billboard lovely as a tree.
Indeed, unless the billboards fall,
I'll never see a tree at all.

Ogden Nash is my hero.

[Richard Stirling]

I ordered the Odgen Nash paper weight and card holder and love it. I did however end up modifying it in a way you might want to consider. As it is designed with a 'wall' on all four sides of the card holder it is dificult to get your thumb under a card to get it out of the holder. I ended up cutting a gap in the front 'wall' so you can get a thumb under a card. The gap is about 1" wide, centered on the front, rounded at the upper corners and cut down to the bottom of the card holder. Now getting a card out of the card holder is a snap. The drawing below will give you a very rough idea looking straight on at the front of the card holder:
_________ (opening) _________
XXXXXXXX|_______|XXXXXXXXX

You may want to consider a design change if others have voiced concern with getting cards out of the card holder easily.

[Logo Design]

Hi there,
Another great post here. that's lovely.