Methuen's Anthology of Modern Verse

I've just been indulging myself with An Anthology of Modern Verse (Methuen, 1921). My Oxfam copy is from 1940, the 30th edition. Staggering to think of how popular it must have been. It's full of the famous: Chesterton and Belloc, Kipling, Hardy, Thomas. And people I've never heard of - and on this meagre evidence, rightly so: Fyleman, Hopewood, Turner. This anthology, obviously enormously popular, has one striking omission: Housman. It is curious but oddly satisfying to see Eliot, Hopkins, Graves, Lawrence, Hardy, Owen, Thomas, Yeats rubbing shoulders with Kipling, Masefield, Stevenson. But why no Housman? His work was current, hugely popular.

92 poets, of whom there are 14 women, most of whom are justly neglected - as indeed, are most of the men.

Chapeau

Was in Ribérac, down a back street. The shop was shut, with its grille down - you can see it in the photograph, along with the reflection of the wall opposite. The model is in a dream within a dream: she's not real; she's in a shop; the shop is closed. She is beyond reach, and from another time.

Tuscan whole milk

It's good milk if you drink it right away, but I'm only giving it one star because it spoiled when I left it [on] the counter when I went away for the weekend. They really should put this in the description. I've bought a lot of products from Amazon (books, CD's, etc.) and I've never had this problem with anything else.

Human creativity knows no bounds. Any new technology will quickly attract populations to exploit it beyond its original purpose, whether they use it to sell things, to rob people blind, to perform new acts of vandalism, or simply to have fun. While facebook attracts its share of spammers, spivs and satirists, it's heartening to know that the wilder reaches of amazon.com have their own colony of creative writers squatting in Gourmet Food.

I was in two minds blogging about it - it's like a small microclimate one hesitates to disturb by sending tourists trampling over it. I've hardly begun to explore its wilder reaches myself yet, but I love the way people adapt creatively to hostile environments. A quick google reveals that I'm late to the party as usual: Boing Boing blogged about it nearly two years ago.