The Flea has bitten some Eratosphereans
 

Doesn't look as if anyone else is going to do this so I will. I am enormously proud to be in http://www.the-flea.com/
The Flea

I love the taste of this little bloodsucker. I share my complacency with some fine Eratosphereans:
Mark Allinson. Maryann Corbett, Ann Drysdale, Richard Epstein, Bill Greenwell, R. Nemo Hill, Janice D. Soderling, and other tremendously good poets.

I am thrilled to be in The Flea because it seems a very special publication with a concentrated aura of being chosen by a fine editor who knows what he wants. Thank you Paul Stevens.

Hear, Hear!

I felt a bit too new to the 'sphere be the first to say it, but I'm proud to be the second sucker in the queue. It's Brit thing, queueing. We do it to prove how polite we are, but when somebody else opens the door, we're in there, with elbows and teeth!

Well met, friends. And thank you, Paul.

Yes! I am very happy to be Flea'd as well.

And especially in such fine company.

Thanks again to Paul, for such a fine little sucker!

Me too! Paul's little sucker is absolutely the most remarkable and interesting and different party I've attended in quite a while, and I'm thrilled to be in the room.

Paul did put an announcement down on GA (in Middle English, no less); sincere thanks to those who said nice things down there as well. And many thanks to Paul for all his work and his incredible inventiveness.

I love the Flea, and I congratulate you all.

I'm seeing some amazing poems by many folks I know. I haven't read the whole issue yet, but so far I've read Janet's poem and it's fabulous, one of the best by her I've seen. I look forward to spending time with the rest of the poems and I'm sure I'm in for many treats.

(Whether or not every poet in the issue constitutes "fine company" is open to serious debate, and was in fact debated here at length. I don't wish to resurrect that entire discussion, but when people speak of the "fine company" or how honored they are to "be in the room," my desire to congratulate my friends here at Erato requires this slight disclaimer on my part. But the issue is fabulous overall.)

All of the poets in The Flea are fine company in the only sense that matters in this context: they write exceptionally fine poetry. If you want to indulge in personal animosity or political gang-warfare, this is not the occasion.

Paul, since when did I become a "gang"? Makes an individual person politely expressing an individual opinion sound so formidable!

But as I said, the entire gang of me thinks it's a wonderful issue with truly exceptional poems to read and savor. I'm greatly impressed.

Thank you Roger, I am very grateful for your kind words.

Mark used the term "fine company". You know he lives alone in a shed and is very pleased to be out just as I am always pleased to share a space with him. He means "other poets whose work he enjoys". I love Mark's Hydrangeas poem and it is a pleasure to be published in its proximity.
I got a charge out of all the poems in this issue.

“What explains their superiority? Charm, I think. When art comes down to the character and the personality revealed by an artist’s decisions, the question of value hinges on how you feel about the artist.” Peter Schjeldahl, The New Yorker, 8/3/09

Thank you, Janet.

Yes, I am very happy to have my poem in the company of your poem also.

In fact, I am very happy to have a poem in the company of ALL the fine poems in this Flea.

Maybe that's because I read a poetry magazine AS a poetry magazine.

Now, if the magazine happened to be filled with the politics of ALL the poets here, I would have to absent myself from this company.

Isn't it great that it IS a poetry magazine.

Yes Mark ;-)

It's not a question of politics, Mark. I'm happy to be included in publications along with people whose politics I strongly disagree with. I'd even be thrilled to be published with you! But I do not use "politics" as a euphemism for all viewpoints, nor do I think the word lends respectability or cover to those who delight in publicly attacking my friends.

I like your poem quite well and am glad to find it online presented so elegantly beside other poems I also admire. I also have great respect for the publication and the integrity with which editorial decisions have been made. Honestly, it's very rare to see so many truly excellent poems gathered together in one place and presented so elegantly, and I'm delighted that so much of the best work is from poets I am proud to know. (Can we just leave it at that?)

Thank you for those comments, Bob.

(Can we just leave it at that?)

Yup, I think we should.

The Flea's elegance is surpassed only by its high quality of verse. Seeing all the Sphereans together makes me realize what a gaggle of fine poets
visit these boards. Paul Lake has done a fine job--as have all the contributors.

Lance Levens

edited in: My error! Paul Stevens.

Lance has edited so all is well.

I've just finished another of several readings of this Flea, and it truly is a wondrous assemblage of quality poems. I wish it was a paper thing I could hold within my hands.

Congratulations to all Spherians involved - all powerful poets showing poems that represent the best of their work, I believe.

Thank you so much for the invigorating experience, Paul. Great work.

Cally

I know exactly what you mean, Cally. The quality of the design is worthy of the quality of the poems, and I can't envisage a better vehicle in which to present those particular excellent poems. Peter Bloxsom has achieved such a realistic 17th century antique printed paper look that THE FLEA just screams out for a printing that exactly reproduces that look. I want to hold it and riffle the pages! And here's a kinky confession: I love the aroma of new books. Engaging with a printed text includes for me an appreciative nosing of the document's bouquet. And then to go on to read such poems!

Yes, wouldn't it look great in paper!

And here's a kinky confession: I love the aroma of new books.

Ah, yes! Isn't it the best smell on earth.

Many years ago (1971/2 to be exact) I worked as a storeman for a year or more at the Penguin Books warehouse in Melbourne - Paul, the aroma in that warehouse was DIVINE!

(Paul, why aren't you watching the game? - Go Storm!)

I am watching, Mark -- it's half time. Go the mighty EELS! Fui Fui Moi Moi!

I posted on the other thread but am taking the liberty to post here as well.

A new reading The Flea this a.m. and I have to use a word I am careful not to throw out carelessly. Ann Drysdale's Said Yeats’s Bones to Hardy’s Heart... is brilliantly crafted, a joy a read.

If The Flea every goes to print, or is printed as an anthology, it will have to have:
1) real leather bindings
2) the kind of "liver-spotted page" design Richard Wilbur talks about in "A Late Aubade"
3) Eighteenth-Century yellowish paper
4) the kind of lead-words printers used back then--printing the first word of the next page at the bottom of the previous page so they could keep track of the sequence
5) maybe even uncut pages so readers would, like in the old days, have to keep a book knife handy to cut the quartets apart as they made their way through the text

No problem. Just buy this:

http://www.neatorama.com/2009/06/07/...mell-in-a-can/

Odd. I'd have expected this crew to prefer, as do I, the smell of old books, that slightly seedy odor best appreciated in a run-down antiquarian bookshop. I told someone once about the aroma of a old Gibbon I'd found, but he thought I was recommending the tang of a monkey house.

Time now for a madeleine dipped in limeflower tea.

RHE

Ah me! That scent, that amalgam of mold, dust, and the decay of sulfite paper, sets off my allergies and asthma and sends me running for my inhaler! I have to be careful even with my own old books.

Brilliant, Roger! Then if we could devise a system to deliver via one's computer squirts of the fresh-books aroma (as well as an option for essence-of-anitiquarian-book for Richard, allergy-free version for Maryann), along with a tactile simulacra (electronically recreated via the mouse perhaps) of the texture of ancient stiff paper and red-leather bindings for David, plus some kinetic sense of heft and gravitas, and with a background multisensory-track of clinking tankards, Jacobean conversational buzz, a slight alcoholic haze, clay-pipe smoke, bold witty wenches and general Mermaid Tavern roister-doistering — why, if we could deliver all that, we would have online the experience entire!

If you could do all that, you wouldn't even need the poems.

But whatt'n a kind ov fish it was--
An greet big goggle eyes!

Congrats to the bitten Spheroids.

Congrats to all the Sphereans who made it in, with a special wow for "Iconography".

Aw, shucks (blushes)--thank you, Rose! And thanks yet again to Paul.

Wonderful issue! My personal favorites were Maryann's and Ann's poems.

Susan

Still working my way through it, but am enjoying it immensely! The Flea always leaves me itching for more :)