Oh to Be Odd!
Oh to Be Odd! - meaning Summary
Playful Identities and Wordplay
Nash playfully sketches personality types by linking ailments and moods to absurd behaviors and puns. Hypochondriacs, alcohol lovers, and manic-depressives are described through whimsical travel, drinking, and work habits that hinge on invented labels like "dipsomognac" and "nawmill." The poem uses light humor to suggest how identity gets compressed into routines and wordplay, inviting readers to laugh at caricatured responses to worry, pleasure, and labor.
Read Complete AnalysesHypochondriacs Spend the winter at the bottom of Florida and the summer on top of the Adirondriacs. You go to Paris and live on champagne wine and cognac If you're dipsomognac. If you're a manic-depressive You don't go anywhere where you won't be cheered up, and people say "There, there!" if your bills are excessive. But you stick around and work day and night and night and day with your nose to the sawmill. If you're nawmill.
*Dipsomaniac -- alcoholic
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