Although Nash was known as the most popular writer of humorous verse in America, he bore for a long time the burden of all brilliantly funny writers. That of not being taken seriously as an artist, as an innovator of unexpected rhyme schemes and a discoverer of the insane possibilities of known words. That lacuna in critical appreciation has been redeemed; that it existed points to the belief that ‘high’ art alone is poetry. This often blinds us to the acutely functioning imagination that pushes the bounds of language and vision in comic poetry — a quality lauded as the mark of the artist in poetry that refuses to laugh.
"Speak Low" is from One Touch of Venus, music by Kurt Weill, lyrics by Ogden Nash.
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