SOURCE: “The Essence of Nonsense,” in The Washington Post, Book World, Vol. X, No. 45, November 9, 1980, pp. 11, 16.

In the following review, Ciardi offers a mixed review of Custard and Company.

The gnomes of whimsy must have been at work to arrange for four superlative books of nonsense in a single season. The high-minded and the morally splendid are dismissed. The words and rhythms are rolling about on the floor and giggling under the bed where, like Morris Bishop's lurking preposition, they ask only:

What should I come Up from out of in under for? 

(Linguaphile, a British word-lover's magazine, recently announced a contest for the longest string of piled-on prepositions. I don't know who won but I will back Bishop's string of seven against the best in Albion.)

Morris Bishop (1893-1973) went to school when English was still an academically respected language with an acknowledged relationship to Latin and...