Tuesday, 1 August 2023

One cannot expect every attempt at poetry to rival Chaucer and Shakespeare, Milton and Wordsworth, Whitman and Dickinson, Wallace Stevens and Hart Crane. But those poets, and their peers, set the measure: any who aspire to poetry must keep such exemplars always in mind.

Country things are the necessary root of our life - and that remains true even of a rootless and tragically urban civilisation. To live permanently away from the country is a form of slow death.

Oh, these nocturnal games and fancies -we should make them real,and try them in the day

The bikini is the most important thing since the atom bomb.


In 1946, Western Europeans joyously greeted the first war-free summer in years, and French designers came up with fashions to match the liberated mood of the people. Two French designers, Jacques Heim and Louis Réard, developed competing prototypes of the bikini. Heim called his the “atom” and advertised it as “the world’s smallest bathing suit.” 

French fashion designer Louis Reard was determined to create an even more scandalous swimsuit. Réard's swimsuit, which was basically a bra top and two inverted triangles of cloth connected by string, was in fact significantly smaller. Made out of a scant 30 inches of fabric, Réard promoted his creation as “smaller than the world’s smallest bathing suit.”

"The accumulated sunlight of bygone days giving off its warmth once more."

Fjords

Calming