Editorial
Here in The Third Flea is a diverse assortment of poems, and yet each of them may be seen in some way or other to resonate with the concerns, techniques and qualities of Metaphysical verse. Mary Alexandra Agner’s ‘Sonnet’, Richard Epstein’s ‘A Centaur in His Dragon World’, Leo Yankevich’s ‘Fly in Amber’ and Marly Youman’s ‘The Great Frost’ might seem most unambiguously in that tradition; but, for example, Mark Allinson’s extension in ‘Blue Hydrangeas’ of his central image of the stripped flowers until it takes on a freight of reference well beyond its literal denotation makes that image a kind of metaphysical conceit; and the magnificent last line of Midge Goldberg's ‘The Way is Closed’ deftly flips the reader at one stroke into a transliminal new world. Every poem in this Flea-ish assemblage is included because it provoked a rich poetic experience in Yr Hmble & Obt Editor; every poem is here for the reasons of poetry. Honi soit qui mal y pense.