Sybaritic Poem by gershon hepner

As sybaritic as a Turkish bath or shvitz,
the cosmopolitans pronounces their consonants and vowels,
but when they leave the ballroom of the Ritz
they sound like borborygmi of the bowels.

Noel Coward, who would have been 100 on December 16, invented no character more important than himself, says Ben Brantley ('Blithe Spirit as Life Force, ' the NYT, September 17,1999) . Cecil Beaton described him as 'sleek and satiny' and that is the impression all young people tried to give while he was a star, sharp, shiny and supremely self-conscious. Glamour became a life force, bringing light an animation to a dark gray world. Everyone 'speaks in the same glittering language in which the frivolous becomes the dead serious and vice versa'.

9/25/99