Three Settings of Ogden Nash

Ogden Nash is often cited as our country's best-known author of humorous poetry. His style emphasizes unconventional rhyming schemes and invented words. These three poems express a loose narrative of experiences and images from civilized urban and suburban life in mid-century America. Tin Wedding Whistle is a marriage proposal; Pretty Halcyon Days is a humorous sketch of a day at the beach; A Lady Who Thinks She Is Thirty explores the fears of growing old, while the narrator wisely reassures the lady that "beauty is timeless for you." Conte captures this tone musically with a style that incorporates aspects of popular music, gentle syncopations, jazz-influenced harmonies, and the conventions of classic American art song.