Analysis of Sample Poems

Unfortunately, It's The Only Game In Town

            Often I think that this shoddy world would be more nifty
If all the ostensibly fifty-fifty proposition in it were truly fifty-fifty.
It’s unfortunate that the odds
Are rigged by the gods.
I do not wish to be impious.
But I have observed that all human hazards that mathematics would declare to be fifty-fifty are actually at least fifty-one-forty-nine in favor of Mount Olympus.
In solitaire, you face the choice of which of two black queens to put on a red king; the chance of choosing right is an even one, not a long one,
Yet three times out of hour you choose the wrong one.
You emerge from a side street onto an avenue, with the choice of turning either right or left to reach a given address.
Do you walk the wrong way? Yes.
My outraged sense of fair play it would salve
If just once I could pull the right curtain cord for the first time, or guess which end of the radiator lid conceals the valve.
Why when choosing between two lanes leading to a highway tollhouse do I take the one containing a lady who first hands the collector a twenty-dollar bill and next drops her change on the ground?
Why when quitting a taxi do I invariably down the door handle when it should be upped and up it when it should be downed?
By the cosmic shell shame I am spellbound.
There is no escape; I am like an oyster, shellbound?
Yes, surely the gods operate according to the fiercest exhortation W. C. Fields ever spake:
Never give a sucker an even break.

 

 Analysis of “Unfortunately, It’s The Only Game In Town”

          “Unfortunately, It’s The Only Game In Town” by Ogden Nash is explaining the hardships of life and how bad the odds usually are.  He probably has experience making hard decisions in life and has perhaps made some wrong choices.  “You emerge from a side street onto an avenue, with the choice of turning either right or left to reach a given address./Do you walk the wrong way?  Yes.”  Nash is disappointed for making the wrong choice in one or more times in his life.  Not following the same patter as his other poems, Ogden Nash portrays the negative side of humanity in a slightly humorous way, although the purpose of writing it, was probably not to make you laugh, but rather to relieve his own emotional stress.  Obviously, in the only game in town, Nash has not played the cards right!

Peekabo, I Almost See You

Middle aged life is merry, and I love to lead it,
But there comes a day when your eyes are all right but your arm isn’t long enough to hold the telephone book where you can read it.
And your friends get jocular, so you can go to the oculist,
And of all your friends he is the joculist,
So over his facetiousness let us skim,
Only noting that he has been waiting for you ever since you said Good Evening to his grandfather clock under the impression that it was him,
And you look at his chart and it says SHRDLU QWERTYOP, and you say Well, why SHRDNTLU QWERTYOP? And he says one set of glasses won’t do.
You need two.
One for reading Erle Stanley Gardener’s Perry Mason and Keats’s “Endymion” with,
And the other for wasling around without saying Hello to a strange wymion with.
So you spend your time taking off your seeing glasses to put on your reading glasses, and then remembering that your reading glasses are upstairs or in the car,
And then you can’t find your seeing glasses again because without them on you can’t see where they are.
Enough of such mishaps, they would try the patience of an ox,
I prefer to forget both pairs of glasses and pass my declineing years saluting strange women and grandfather clocks.

Analysis of “Peekabo, I Almost See You”

          “Peekabo, I Almost See You” by Ogden Nash has a funny, “light verse” side to it, although, as well it can be contrasted with a deeper and heavier meaning. Nash portrays the day in a life of someone with bad vision, in a humorous way. It's important for the reader to know that he has glasses of his own. I think what may be the deeper meaning in this poem is that he is feeling self-pity and is expressing it in an amusing way. He expresses this in “And your friends get jocular, so you go to the oculist,/And of all your friends he is the joculist…and he says one set of glasses won’t do./You need two.” Obviously, he is not very fond of the eye doctor and is almost being sarcastic. All in all, Ogden Nash portrays a relationship between him, his eye doctor, and a grandfather clock.