Robert Frost & Ogden Nash

These two poets are about as opposite as you can get. One the master of dark understatement from rural New England, the other the light-verse virtuoso oft associated with the New Yorker. Though a good deal of their lives overlapped (Frost 1874 - 1963, Nash 1902 - 1971), they don't seem to have had anything to do with each other. I can find no reference to Nash in Frost's selected letters, or in a biography I have of Frost. I don't know enough about Nash's life or letters to say "vice versa," but I'm certain I could, although Frost does make an appearance in one of Nash's poems ("O, Snow-Bound was written by Robert Frost / And Scott Fitzgerald wrote Paradise Lost" — from Who Did Which? or Who Indeed?).

A quick stroll through the table of contents of a volume by both poets easily shows how worlds apart they are, but here are a few contrasting stanzas, exempli gratia:

The City
by Odgen Nash

This beautiful ditty
Is, for a change, about the city,
Although ditties aren't very popular
Unless they're rural and not metropular.

Sentimentalists object to towns initially
Because they are made artificially,
But so is vaccination,
While smallpox is an original creation.

Artists speak of everything urban
As the W.C.T.U. speaks of rye and bourbon,
And they say cities are only commercial marts,
But they fail to realize that no marts, no arts.

The country was made first,
Yes, but people lived in it and rehearsed,
And when they finally got civilization down,
Why, they moved to town.

Take country people, they suffer stoically,
But city people prefer to live unheroically;
Therefore city dentistry is less painful,
Because city dentists find it more gainful.

City people are querulous and queasy,
And they'd rather die than not live easy
And if they did die, they'd find fault
If they weren't put in an air-conditioned vault.

Yes, indeed, they are certainly sissies,
Not at all like Hercules or Ulysses,
But because they are so soft,
City life is comfortable, if not perpetually, at least oft.

The Need of Being Versed in Country Things
by Robert Frost

The house had gone to bring again
To the midnight sky a sunset glow.
Now the chimney was all of the house that stood,
Like a pistil after the petals go.

The barn opposed across the way,
That would have joined the house in flame
Had it been the will of the wind, was left
To bear forsaken the place's name.

No more it opened with all one end
For teams that came by the stony road
To drum on the floor with scurrying hoofs
And brush the mow with the summer load.

The birds that came to it through the air
At broken windows flew out and in,
Their murmur more like the sigh we sigh
From too much dwelling on what has been.

Yet for them the lilac renewed its leaf,
And the aged elm, though touched with fire;
And the dry pump flung up an awkward arm;
And the fence post carried a strand of wire.

For them there was really nothing sad.
But though they rejoiced in the nest they kept,
One had to be versed in country things
Not to believe the phoebes wept.

But they were not always so antipodal. Frost occasionally penned a whimsical verse:

Sym-ball-ism

The symbol of the number ten—
The naught for girls, the one for men—
Defines how many times does one
In mathematics or in fun
Go as you might say into zero.
You ask the heroine and hero.

And Nash sometimes weighted his lines:

Old Men

People expect old men to die,
They do not really mourn old men.
Old men are different. People look
At them with eyes that wonder when...
People watch with unshocked eyes;
But the old men know when an old man dies.

But both poets came together in a very real way for me in the last few days. Last Wednesday, I stopped at Half-Price Books while my wife was getting her lovely locks scissored. I checked all the sections I normally do, to see if anything new was in. In the poetry section, I spied an old edition of Frost's complete poems. It was actually entitled "Collected Poems," and it was published by Halcyon House, which I found odd because Holt had published most of his poetry.



I pulled it from the shelf and thumbed through it. It was published in 1942, and definitely looked that old.



The first page was inscribed, "To Mother, With Love, Helen. Mother's Day 1944." Inside the book were several newspaper clippings about Frost which had stained the pages they were wedged between.



Frost is one of my favorite poets, and I have three different volumes of his complete poems (one published in 1964 just after his death, one edited by Edward Connery Lathem who "regularized" a lot of Frost's punctuation and spelling, and the Library of America edition which is the best you can get of the poet). This would make an interesting fourth volume, and would be the oldest of the lot. But I wasn't quite sure, as books are a vice of mine, and I've been trying to buy fewer and read more of the ones I already have. Did I really want it, I asked myself. Especially with the newspaper stains. As I was mulling it over, I looked back at the front of the book, and separated a couple of pages that had static cling, and suddenly saw this:



I'm sure my jaw dropped open at the sight of that. I just remember a rush of thought like, "Is that really Frost's signature?! Can't be. How could it have ended up here, like any old book? Frost's signature? Really?" I looked and looked at it. Even though I had a wee bit of doubt—I had to doubt, I mean, what are the chances?—but also, I knew. I had seen Frost's writing before, and this volume even had a facsimile of his signature on the frontispiece. I wandered the aisles a little more, walking off my excitement some, and bought it.

I have no idea how much it's worth. I did manage to find this very edition, also signed, on eBay, for $249. Needless to say, considerably more than I payed for it, but no matter the monetary value, it is the jewel of my little Frost collection.

Since the signature was dated March 13, 1949, I wanted to see if I could find out where he was that day. I checked his selected letters and biography, but couldn't find anything near that date. So I went online and typed in "Robert Frost March 13, 1949." Lo and behold, I found this site detailing the Frost collection at Bluffton University, and from one of the items listed, I can say it's likely that Frost signed this book in Georgia at Agnes Scott College:

Folder 30 - Photographic Material -- Photographs
1. (1945?) - Frost at University of Georgia (lighter exposure)
2. (1945?) - Frost at University of Georgia (darker exposure)
3. January 1947 - Frost at Agnes Scott, signing books (signed)
4. January 1947 - Frost at Agnes Scott, signing books (signed)
5. March 13, 1949 - Frost with Doris Sullivan, Agnes Scott student

Incidentally, while looking around on eBay and other websites, I happened upon a photo of Frost's Complete Poems 1949. I had never seen what it looked like, and I was intrigued how it looked exactly the same as my 1964 edition, except for the year 1949 on the cover. Then I remembered that not long ago, perhaps just this last time, I had seen at Half-Price a volume of Frost that looked like that. At the time, I had passed it by, thinking I already owned that edition. It suddenly struck me that it could have been the 1949 edition, and what's more, it could be signed. (Crazy and covetous, I know.)

So a few days later, I went back to Half-Price Books. The volume was gone, alas, and though I felt a little disappointed, I realized I was being rather silly. To find one like this, not probable but quite possible. To find two, not possible, at least statistically. But while I'm here, I thought, I might as well check some of the other old poetry tomes on the shelf. You never know... I pulled an old, cigarette-smelling edition of Carl Sandburg of the shelf. No signature. Read a few pages, placed it back on the shelf. Looked at an old, thick volume of Kipling. Then saw on the bottom shelf a collection by Ogden Nash.



I'd actually seen it before, but didn't bother looking at it. I have a good edition of his already (Verses from 1929 On), and though I like his light verse, you have to be in the mood for it.

I slid it from between its companions on the shelf, opened it and saw right away this:



No way! I had no idea what Nash's signature looked like, and wondered if it might be fake. But does that really happen? And who would fake Nash's signature? It was written with a heavy black pen, and at the bottom of the page was a lighter inscription, "To my Love, Dorothy Ann. Love, Bill. 3/23/42". The book itself was published in 1941. The fact that the inscription was at the bottom of the page, obviously leaving room for the signature, pretty much cinched it for me.

So again, I made a happy purchase, and after getting home checked online to see if I could verify the signature. Sure enough, it was his, and I found one site that was selling a signature of his for $399.00. I think I've probably used up all my luck for the rest of my life.

Which is why I haven't even attempted removing the price stickers. Modern stickery is designed to survive a direct nuclear hit, and will rip and tear anything it is removed from, or at least leave a nasty residue. Does anyone have an idea how to safely remove them?

Speaking of things modern, I end with a poem by each. These are by no means the best, but I find them relevant to our time.

Not to Keep
by Robert Frost

They sent him back to her. The letter came
Saying... And she could have him. And before
She could be sure there was no hidden ill
Under the formal writing, he was there,
Living. They gave him back to her alive—
How else? they are not known to send the dead—
And not disfigured visibly. His face?
His hands? She had to look, to look and ask,
'What is it, dear?' And she had given all
And still she had all—they had—they the lucky!
Wasn't she glad now? Everything seemed won,
And all the rest for the permissable ease.
She had to ask, 'What was it, dear?'

'Enough
Yet not enough. A bullet through and through,
High in the breast. Nothing but what good care
And medicine and rest, and you a week,
Can cure me of to go again.' The same
Grim giving to do over for them both.
She dared no more than ask him with her eyes
How was it with him for a second trial.
And with his eyes he asked her not to ask.
They had given him back to her, but not to keep.

Everybody Tells Me Everything
by Ogden Nash

I find it very difficult to enthuse
Over the current news.
Just when you think that at least the outlook is so black that it can grow no blacker, it worsens,
And that is why I do not like the news, because there has never been an era when so many things were going so right for so many of the wrong persons.

A little bit of Frost, a little bit of Nash, and a whole lot of luck.