I’m a Stranger Here Myself (1938) is a celebrated collection of light verse by Ogden Nash, the American poet renowned for his witty, irreverent, and delightfully irregular rhymes. This early anthology captures Nash at his most playful, turning everyday absurdities—marriage, animals, social faux pas—into sharp, memorable poetry that dances between satire and sheer whimsy.
The book includes some of Nash’s most famous lines, such as “The turtle lives ‘twixt plated decks / Which practically conceal its sex,” and “Candy / Is dandy / But liquor / Is quicker.” His verses, often defying traditional meter, revel in clever wordplay and a tongue-in-cheek skepticism of human pretensions. A recurring theme is the gentle mockery of modern life’s contradictions, as in “The Terrible People,” where he jabs at elitism with the observation: “People who have what they want are very fond of telling people who haven’t what they want that they don’t want it.”
Published by Little, Brown & Co., the first edition features a navy-blue dust jacket with Nash’s own self-portrait doodle—a fittingly quirky touch for a poet who turned the mundane into art. Nash’s work here solidified his status as a New Yorker favorite and a national treasure, influencing generations of humorists.
For readers who enjoy Nash’s style, Verses from 1929 On offers a broader retrospective, while The Collected Poems of Dorothy Parker delivers similarly biting charm.
