Ogden Nash was a poetic wit without equal. His was the gift of poetry with a chuckle, never too offensive but never without a little spice. I still miss the guy. Hey, if he were still alive, I'd be writing putative puns about his puns, don't you see.

Here’s a good rule of thumb:
Too clever is dumb---Ogden Nash

It’s probably incongruous to wonder
how Ogden would have viewed
the humongous blunder of...
how are you guys doing?
when it’s plain to be seen
from blouses and jeans,
no one has screened
the gals from the guys!

Ogden’s long gone,
but wouldn’t, I think, have approved
the weird linguistic groove—the wrong turn society took—when disappeared
went missing. Isn’t it bad enough
to be horribly dead (probably),
without being grammatically incorrect
as well? And what can offended folk say
from (usually) their graves?
Too clever is dumb.

I think old man “O” would have relished
that verbal oddity that’s growing—
a tour that somehow became a tore
in the brain of some bore on a coast,
and I’m not really thinking of Ireland.

I’m pretty certain too, given his
rathers, Ogden would’ve stuck with
affected for impacted, though
as you’ve all probably heard,
we’re impacted now by everything
from grime to crime and the markets’ decline—Oh, we’re in for it whether
our intellectual bowels like it
or not, ‘cause CNN, NBC, CBS & FOX
all agree, we’re going to be
impacted regularly, and that’s
the end of it.

Oh, too clever is dumb!