> > Yes, there are a few exceptions. Ogden Nash wrote good poetry that was funny, and Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote "As Funny As I Can."
> > Howard
>
> Mmm, what's Holmes' "As Funny as I Can" about? Sounds very interesting if you're ranking him up there with Mr.Nash!
>
> Now here's the only Ogden Nash that I can remember offhand.
>
> / / / The song of canaries
> / / / Never varies,
> / / / And when they're moulting
> / / / They're pretty revolting.
>
> Another bit of poetry comes to mind... I know that we previously determined that "Oh, what a tangled web we weave" was written by Sir Walter Scott in 1808, but for some reason I thought there was another more humorous continuation to that verse, written more recently. Could it have been Ogden Nash who wrote it? Sounds like the sort of thing he'd do.
>
> Wolfspirit

I hadn't heard the one about the canaries in many years! I can remember a variation on the tangled web, but it isn't the kind of thing we post on this forum. I can't remember all of "As Funny As I Can," but the jist of it is that he decided to write the funniest poem. Then he showed it to a servant who read it. As he read, the servant smiled, then he grinned, then he chuckled, then he horse-laughed and "tumbled in a fit." The poem ends with this:
"Ten days and nights with sleepless eye
I watched that wretched man,
And since I never dared to write
As funny as I can."

Holmes wrote some pretty serious stuff, but this is the one I remember. If my memory serves me, he was a lawyer, doctor, poet, and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
Howard