Dear Miss Kalayjian,
I must confess that the poem I most often recite to myself and anyone who will listen is Noel Coward’s “I’ve Been to a Marvelous Party.” Why? I can’t explain it. The sheer aimless rollicking silliness of it just appeals to me. I offer a sample stanza:
I’ve been to a marvelous party,
I must say the fun was intense,
We all had to do
What the people we knew
Would be doing a hundred years hence.
Dear Cecil arrived wearing armor,
Some shells and a black feather boa,
Poor Millicent wore a surrealist comb
Made of bits of mosaic from St. Peter’s in Rome,
But the weight was so great that she had to go home,
I couldn’t have liked it more!
— Noel Coward
With best wishes,
