Editorial
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To THE GRASSHOPPER,
& THE IMP,
from THE FLEA
This issue of THE FLEA is dedicated to the merrie Memory of Mistress Margaret Griffiths, who left us in 2009 aged 62; an extraordinary poet & excellent friend, who first set me upon this Via Dolorosa et Amorosa of poetry editing;
& also,
To the Memory of Terrence Mawson Stanton, Gentleman, who split the scene on 23rd May 2010, aged 63; hitch-hiking North for Winter to Magnetic Island, where he is sleeping on the beach. Friend, Stirrer, Genius, & Enactor of the Utterly
Impossible.
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The FLEA CIRCUS
&
General Bug Hatching Day Celebratory Issue;
Being,
a Monster Invertebrate Rave Party where the Participants are all Rockin to de Riddim, Buzzing & Starry-Ey’d from wantoune ingestion of Meet Mead Nectarsy, InsEcstasy, Chitamine, Poppie-Juice, Toad’s Blood, & divers other Phantasie-engendering Bug-Pills &
Pill-Bugs
~~~
THE FLEA hath now attayn’d this May-monthe, the age of One Year and a daye; and despyte the Vicissitudes of Fortune, & the remorseless Foulenesse of Time; in dire despyte, yea, of hard persecution by Papistes, Puritans and Pharisees, & in further despyte of the misguyded application of vyle Insecticydes by Over-zealous, super-officyous Goodwyves; enduring such tribulacyons & muche more, yet still THE FLEA’S Ætheric Broadsheet of metaphysically complexion’d Verse hath prosper’d & swolne; aye, and suck’d mightily also—of the sweet waters of the Horse’s Fountaine; until the tiny insect-mote or speck hath wax’d so enormously engorg’d with Pure Hippocrene, that it seems indeed a veritable Mount Helicon of a FLEA, stupendous in the Magnitude of its Incline & Girth; dizzying in its rarify’d tow’ring Heyghtes; & all this magnyficence hath come to pass during a twelvemonth of the Reygne of our glorious Good Queen Bess; Vivat Eliza!
Our present VIIIth Poetickal Broadsheete Issue enacts a Bacchanalian Flea Circus, or Insect Rave, or (it may bee) Bug Party; to which Festival of Invertebrates THE FLEA hath invited such an arraye of Creepers, Crawlers, Hoppers, Buzzers, Slitherers, Mosaic-Ey’d Hoverers, Flyers, Flippers, Nippers, Stingers, Whizzers, Hummers, Weavers, Spinners, Sloshers, Squelchers, Fleshe-piercing Blood-suckers, & Slithy Toves, as the World has never before behelde poeticiz’d; a true nonpareil, or Nonsuch, of Poetic Bug-ery. Such is the Buzze and Humme of this Celebration, that the multitudinous Number of Poems exhibited herein hath uniquely & riotously o’erflow’d all previously charted bounds of Flea-ish Broadsheetdom; & (to speke trans-tropically), thys unruly Shippe of Fleas, with her hoppin’ & boppin’, bug-ey’d Insectile Crewe, hath sayl’d away, away; right clene over the Edge of thys dull subLunary Worlde, & ever on into the sublimest fiery Empyrean of the Primum Mobile.
Your Humble Editor hath, after much meditative scrutiny of his critical Faculties, decided upon Five (rather than three) winners of the totally unsubstantial, impalpable & non-Corporeal Golden Flea Awards; whiche trophies, constructed entirely of golde to ayrey thinnesse beate, & utterly lacking in Ontological Substance, are awarded to the following Poems, publish’d in THE FLEA during the previous Twelvemonth & a Day; viz,
Item, The Once-onlie, Nirvana-Supreme, Non Plus Ultra, Grand Cosmic Order of The Golden Flea is awarded to ‘The Pismire Oration’ by Margaret Griffiths https://the-flea.com/Issue8/EpigraphPismire.html
Golden Flea Awards are also hereby presented to,
Item, ‘Against Beauty’ by Alfred Nicol https://the-flea.com/Issue2/AgainstBeauty.html
Item, ‘Metre-wanker’ by Ann Drysdale https://the-flea.com/Issue6/MetreWanker.html
Item, ‘Small Game on the Prairie’ by Timothy Murphy https://the-flea.com/Issue7/SmallGameonthePrairie-2.html
Item, ‘Starfish Harvest’ by Amit Majmudar https://the-flea.com/Issue8/StarfishHarvest.html
The 2010 Golden Flea Awards will be delyver’d instanter by shining Angels to the Fortunate Recipients; & that to be done imperceptibly, on the Metaphysical Plane, all with the Blessing of The Soveraygne Muse.
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Whither and how THE FLEA shall hoppe hereinafter is a Mystery Unfathomable, even to Your Humble Editor; & yet, Honest Reader, be advys’d & nota bene, that it is recordyd in Sir Thomas Malory’s chivalrous Tale of the Puce d’Arthur, that ‘som men say in many partys of Inglonde that THE FLEA ys nat dede, but had by the wyll of oure Lorde Jesu into another place; and men say that THE FLEA shall com agayne ... ’