Online Poetry: December 2003 Archives

I like 3rd Bed, www.3rdbed.com for a lot of reasons. For one, its name is ingenious, derived from The Republic, where Plato famously describes a bed in three aspects: the first and therefore most real bed is the idea of "bed"; the second is that object made by the carpenter; and the third bed, the one imitated by the painter. You know immediately where this little zine is headed. The poems (I can comment only on these) are indeed the artifices that Plato had in mind. When you read them, you are reading "made language," verbal icons and artifacts. (You are not, or not necessarily, reading little narrative histories, morality lyrics, philosophical treatises, confessions, self-improvement devices).

An example:

Barn Song
--by Corey Mead

Liquid trees? and Edgar doesn?t know
even a part of Anna

To rise and go to the field and cut off his head.

Like, the more they talk
never having
in fields this constant: nature is lost.
Edgar almost...the mind.

And, risen, never
returned to the barn.

(from the current issue)

Certainly, language takes precedence over narrative here! From the opening question, posed in media raes, to its fabulous (in two senses) ending, this little song is deliciously unfamiliar. As for the references, would that be Degas, Poe, another? Given the surreality, I lean toward Poe. But I appropriate the poem just fine, thank you, without the correct historical or literary allusion.