Name at birth: Frederic Ogden Nash

Ogden Nash was an American poet whose verse was light, whimsical and often nonsensical. One of his best-known poems, "Reflections on Ice-Breaking," goes like this: Candy / Is dandy / But liquor / Is quicker. Nash grew up in New York and Georgia and spent a year studying at Harvard (1921). In the early 1930s he was a staff editor and frequent contributor to The New Yorker magazine, but left to devote his time to writing full-time. He published children's books and several popular collections of poetry, and earned a reputation as a master at wordplay. During the 1940s and '50s Nash was a frequent guest on television game shows and he was a popular lecturer throughout his career. His books include Hard Lines (1931), I'm a Stranger Here Myself (1938) and Everyone but Thee and Me (1962), and he collaborated on the Broadway musicals One Touch of Venus (1942) and Two's Company (1952). Another of his famous poems is "The Lama," which goes:

The one-l lama,
He's a priest.
The two-l llama,
He's a beast.
And I will bet
A silk pajama
There isn't any
Three-l lllama.*

*The author's attention has been called to a type of conflagration known as a three-alarmer. Pooh.