Purity, is Obscurity

I had a huge argument today - with someone who insisted this poem didn't allow one to have a variety of voice inflections and variety in tone.

Like every other instance in my life when I am asked for my opinion, this instance too was a disaster. See, I am not the sort of person who goes about giving free advice. I don't really spend too much time thinking about how people ought to go about their business. I have enough trouble managing my own.

But here I was sitting quietly at my desk, in my bath robe, with the lillies on my desk now in full bloom, and my photographs and my post-its, feeling like the queen of my universe when someone (as mad and possibly unreasonable as the March Hare) comes around and asks me for my opinion.

Now see, just because I don't give free advice doesn't mean I don't like being asked for advice. If you know what I mean? (and God knows I meddle in the affairs of those I love)
Makes one feel important... wanted... good stuff like that...

I got too involved.

One thing I always forget is that when people ask you for advice, what they are really asking for is for you to agree with them. You are supposed to nod in agreement and assure them that you yourself, in your decidedly inferior wisdom would not have thought of something as marvelous as that. "Oh! My word! That is an excellent idea."

But like I said... I got too involved... and I told the truth ... and all the frustration that individual felt towards my unexpected dissent was then taken out on the poor poem. (Ogden Nash, rest his soul)

So vehemently did I argue, that now I realize I feel for this poem in so many ways... I can die defending it. And that Ogden Nash... such a sweetie I tell you...


So That's Who I Remind Me Of
by Ogden Nash

When I consider men of golden talents,
I'm delighted, in my introverted way,
To discover, as I'm drawing up the balance,
How much we have in common, I and they.

Like Burns, I have a weakness for the bottle,
Like Shakespeare, little Latin and less Greek;
I bite my fingernails like Aristotle;
Like Thackeray, I have a snobbish streak.

I'm afflicted with the vanity of Byron,
I've inherited the spitefulness of Pope;
Like Petrarch, I'm a sucker for a siren,
Like Milton, I've a tendency to mope.

My spelling is suggestive of a Chaucer;
Like Johnson, well, I do not wish to die
(I also drink my coffee from the saucer);
And if Goldsmith was a parrot, so am I.

Like Villon, I have debits by the carload,
Like Swinburne, I'm afraid I need a nurse;
By my dicing is Christopher out-Marlowed,
And I dream as much as Coleridge, only worse.

In comparison with men of golden talents,
I am all a man of talent ought to be;
I resemble every genius in his vice, however heinous-
Yet I write so much like me.