Editorial
Second Carrier: I think this be the most villanous house in all London road for FLEAS: I am stung like a tench.
First Carrier: Like a tench! by the mass, there is ne’er a king christen could be better bit than I have been since the first cock.
—Shake-speare, The History of Henry IV, Part I
And this Broadsheete XIII be the most villanous house in all the wide Æthernet for poems with sharp and piercing Teeth; for here may be encounter’d as handsome a congeries of poignant byting Verses as you might meet in a seven-dayes March in any direction; Free Verse & Form Verse, Rim’d Verse & Vnrim’d, Merrie Verse & Sober Verse, Racy Street-ballades, Satyres, & Well-wroughte Monuments of Platonick Love; whatsoe’er fine Verse ye may fancie, Masters & Mistresses, here may ye find; all skilfully quill’d by divers Handes, & imprinted here upon quality Pixels for the General; whiche Broade-sheete you may pvrchase with subliminal Coyne at the Signe of The Flea, harde by St. Pawles.
In this House of THE FLEA (or FLEA-Holme), ye may happen upon Richard Epstein, a verie Publius Ovidius Naso for our Times with his Metamorphoses, or Transformations; herein dwells Anna Evans, whose Sweet Sugar, penn’d & publish’d quick as a Flea, inter-rogates St. Valentyne’s Feast, (as quaintely misvnderstoode by those vnfortunate, un-school’d Virginia colonists,who have, alas!, fallen from the specific Observances & Qualities of that Lovers-Saint’s Holy-day); here is Marybeth Rua-Larsen’s exqvisite illumination of Queen Anne Boleyn, mother of our late & glorious Monarch, Astræa; here, Sir Thomas Kerrigan, who discouers Celestial Music from Crows on a Wire, as it may be Notes array’d upon a Stave; with Mistress Jennifer Reeser’s elegant Whimsie of The Lady Who Liues Here; & many more good Poems ensu’ing.
I say, a Feaste of Fleas hoppes in this House; if a nimble FLEA can be conceiu’d a Vessel wherein to containe, & inseparably inter-mix Physical & Meta-physical Essences, (as our Jack Donne hath so ably & in strong lines indited); here indeed be The Muse’s Proud & Prancing FLEAS, say I!
That cunning & learned Doctor of the Ætherial Artes, Peter Bloxsom, Master of Netpublish, hath craftily deviz’d for the Diuersion of our Poets & Readers, an Author Index, which may be discouer’d in the Array of Linkes along the Top of THE FLEA’s Broadsheets from this XIIIth, & pursuivant. In this Author Index Readers shall find listed all of the divers poems compos’d by each particular Parnassian represented in THE FLEA, and thereby better appreciate the scope of that Parnassian’s Workes. Peter Bloxsom hath, moreouer, plac’d within the same array, (near the zenith of each Flea-ish page), a link wherewith to SEARCH among the Broadsheets of THE FLEA, for some elusiue or desir’d Gemme of poetical word or phrase, or some especially glittering & wittie Veine of fine Conceipte. Auail yourselues too, merrie Authors & Readers, of the Tell & Share contriuance at the Foote of each page, wherewith ye may, astonishingly, at a Stroke, boast, tweet & vaingloriously trumpet abroad your fauour’d Page poetickal, to Friendes & Admirers in the Face-Boke, or the Tome of Visages, or the Royaume of the Yahoos, or Twitter-land, &c. &c.
So we beat on, Fleas against the current, hopping back ceaselessly into the past; & forthe vigorously into the what-is-yet-to-come.
