And that I will never have to do it again is a hope that I am against hope hopan.

[samfat33]

What does the poet mean by this line " And that I will never have to do it again is a hope that I am against hope hopan." Its from "This is going to hurt just alittle bit" by Ogden Nash.

[RonBee]

He hopes he will never have to do it again, but he is afraid he might have to.

~R

[Fred O'Hanlon]

Dear Samfat33

One thing I like less than most things is sitting in a dentist chair with my mouth wide open.
And that I will never have to do it again is a hope that I am against hope hopan.

Out of curiosity I looked up the poem and found that it begins as quoted above.

Nash is has written a poem on a most unpoetic topic; a visit to the dentist's. He uses most unpoetic language, uneducated everyday American English.

He expresses most unpoetic sentiments in unpoetic lanuage and in doing so he attempts to reproduce uneducated pronunciation in his spelling.

'hopan' is his attempt to reproduce 'hop'n', that is, 'hoping' with a schwa in place of the first comma and nothing in place of the second comma.

The second line means 'I am hoping against hope that I shall nver have to to do this again'.

'hoping against all hope' is a common idiom. It means 'I hope although I know there is no hope (chance) that ...'

Fred O'Hanlon

[Anglika]

He is of course also creating a rhyme in a word that normally would not rhyme with the previous end word. Very typical Ogden Nash.