Ogden Nash: from Failed Bond Salesman to Influencer and Thought Leader

Happy birthday to the man who wrote:

"Abracadabra, thus we learn,

The more you create, the less you earn.

The less you earn, the more you're given,

The less you lead, the more you're driven,

The more destroyed, the more they feed,

The more you pay, the more they need

The more you earn, the less you keep,

And now I lay me down to sleep.

I pray the Lord my soul should take

If the tax collector hasn't got it before I wake."

Ogden Nash was a leader in his field. He started as a salesman and said he made one sale of bond - to his grandmother.

Every kid knows he can sell his grandmother anything.

But, he was also a leader who found his niche among words.

he used them, led with them, communicated with them, and even made them u when it suited him.

In the meantime, he made an honest living as a thought leader, editing other peoples' work, teaching, lecturing, playing on at least one game show, and writing some of America's favorite poems.

Senator Smoot (Republican, Ut.)

Is planning a ban on smut.

Oh rooti-ti-toot for Smoot of Ut.

And his reverend occiput.

Smite, Smoot, smite for Ut.,

Grit your molars and do your dut.,

Gird up your l__ns,

Smite h_p and th_gh,

We'll all be Kansas

By and by.

Thought leadership, first requires thinking. It also requires a unique twist or signature for one's thinking, a freshness and flavor that is ones' own. Nash was unmistakable. The "scars" on his literary voice were his own. His opinions were strong and his humor was vivid.

but his words were his commodity.

we can also learn that a thought leader must be willing to marketing himself or herself and be vulnerable enough to face the possibility of rejection, even self-rejection. We certainly deal with self-doubt.

A thought leader must also be willing to be "out there," exposed and available. Nash was that. See the attachment of an example, his participation on the "Information Please" radio broadcast of 1939.

"I think in terms of rhyme, and have since I was six years old," he said, and did it well.

He emerged from a family of some influence and leadership. City of Nashville was named for his uncle. His father was a man of prominence.

He fostered that prominence in his children and grandchildren. One of his grandsons of note is Nicholas Nash Eberstadt, a political economist. It speaks to to his influence.

At one point in his childhood, he lived in a house that was once the home of the founder of the Girl Scouts, Juliette Gordon Low

He spent one year at Harvard

Then, he taught for one year

Then, he became a bond salesman ""Came to New York to make my fortune as a bond salesman and in two years sold one bond—to my godmother."

Aft that he wrote streetcar card ads.

While working as an editor at Doubleday, he submitted some short rhymes to The New Yorker.

This was a resourceful man who did many jobs to earn a living while he pursued his passion. He excelled at all, except, if we are to believe him, at bond sales. I think the truth is somewhere on the continuum between success and failure.

One thing is the truth, however: the summer I sold vacuum cleaners, in the most charitable sense of the word, "sold," I placed four in Virginia homes. One of them was purchased by my wife.

And I consider myself a pretty good salesman.

When Nash was not writing poems, he made guest appearances on comedy and radio shows and toured the United States giving lectures at colleges and universities. He was much more successful at selling words and ideas. He was a thought leader.

Nash was the lyricist for at least one Broadway musical and often collaborated in the realm of show business when clelver words were needed.

Nash was best known for surprising, pun-like rhymes, sometimes with words deliberately misspelled for comic effect, as in his retort to Dorothy Parker's humorous dictum, "Men seldom make passes / At girls who wear glasses":

Once, he wrote his own version of Joyce Kilmer's poem "Trees" and repeated hers, "I think that I shall never see / a poem lovely as a tree"

Then, he added, "Indeed, unless the billboards fall / I'll never see a tree at all."

Sometimes, he wrote with a cause in mind, like the time he edified Senator Eugene McCarthy:

"Happy Birthday, dear Eugene,

The first to give us a choice between.

Today in you we place our trust,

Not an alternative, but a must.

The kids are for you, glory be,

And so are wise old men like me.

How many statesmen of good intent

Would rather be right than president.

But I will gladly take my oath

That you're the man who can be both.

As your 52nd candle burns,

Many happy election returns!"

In a New York Times obituary, May 20, 1971, Alvin Krebs quoted and observed:

“'I wrote sonnets about beauty and truth, eternity, poignant pain,” he said. “That was what the people I read wrote about, too — Keats, Shelley, Byron, the classical English poets.'”

Finally, however, he decided that he'd better “laugh at my self before anyone laughed at me,” and he took to writing nonsensical verse. One summer afternoon in 1930, as he sat at his office desk, finding it difficult to keep his mind off the business of writing advertising copy, he had “a silly idea.”

That was Ogden Nash's voice and genius. From a bond salesman, he became a salesman of ideas, thoughts, words, and of himself.

We can learn from him at best and be inspired at least.

I choose both.