Three's a Crowd

http://www.crowdmagazine.com/ has published three issues, the most recent, Spring-Summer 2003. A lot has happened since then, so I wonder whether the magazine is still solvent. If not, it would be a shame because this little mag finds very strong writers--poets, at least--and its poetry editor, Brett Lauer, has definite ideas about what he wants to see published under the Crowd masthead.

Of course, I base this observation on only three poems of one issue that's now almost a year old. The TOC shows 19 poetry contributors, including Paul Muldoon. And there are entries of fiction (3), art (6), and photography (7).

Crowd Magazine is actually a print publication with a web site. The fact that the Internet is still full of this type of poetry magazine, I guess, testifies to its relative infancy. Hard to become as sophisticated as the print industry in only 10 years. It's certainly an indication that the poetry publishing industry--or any publishing for that matter--has yet to interiorize the new medium.

Crowd, like many other poetry pubs, uses its web site primarily as a marketing tool, sampling just enough of its contents to entice the browsing reader to buy an annual subscription ($20, though that may be an expensive alternative given the infrequency & irregularity of new issues posted to the web); or purchase a back issue ($12 for issue 3, $7 for issue 1, issue 2 is sold out). An annual subscription, apparently, also gets you full access to the contents of the online postings.

A "Past Issues" link takes you to the names of the two previous issues, but they, unfortunately, are not linked. Strike three, in spring/summer parlance. I fear that either the little mag is defunct or the editors have abandoned the web site.

Published in Brooklyn, New York, Crowd likely is available in NYC magazine and independent bookstores. It'd be helpful if the editors let you know which vendors--but buying a print copy off the street might not jive well with their odd reluctance to share contents online.

Still, the poetry's quite attractive, rich in tone and technique, and accomplished. Of the three poems & poets featured in the only issue available online, you begin to get a sense of editorial direction and predilection. Let's say "seriously surreal." "The Skin's Broken Aria," by Jennifer Chang, is a good example, as the opening lines indicate:

I cross the street
and my skin falls off. Who walks
to an abandoned lake? Who
abandons lakes?

Who, indeed? This meditation on Madame Butterfly, the human envelope, self, and imagined lives asks lots of provocative questions, voluptuously. "They don't / sell skin at Wal-Mart. And really, how / could I, humbly, buy it?" "Do you know/Puccini? Do you spill silk / at the gorgeous onslaught of love, of Pinkerton's / lurking return?"

I don't know about anybody else, but, as the saying goes, I value my skin. So does the (imagined) body beyond the voice of this poem. "My great passion was my skin." "There is no skin like mine." Perfect lines for the perfectly powdered (and powerless) Mdme. Butterfly.

Biology reminds us that we completely replace our body's cells about once every seven years. That fact makes expressions like "I've got you under my skin," or "If I were in your skin," and poems like this one either comical or tragical. Pick one. And it confirms that only memory and imagination make a whole & sustainable person. And love, maybe, or its substitutes.

Issue 3's cover is a photo of a lunch room, the nondescript kind you often see in nondescript office buildings: some cheap tables and chairs and bad lighting, nothing on the walls. A bottle of water, a couple of aluminum cans litter the tables. If there was a crowd, they've gone now. There's a big silence left over. That's where Crowd magazine comes in.

Note: the online issue invites submissions (five poems at a time, but only paper copies via postal mail, with SASE; no other guidelines provided). Might be worth subscribing or submitting to, assuming it's still alive. Hard to tell.