(T.A.E.’s LitBites) – A modern retelling of Two gentlemen of Verona by William Shakespeare Proteus and Valentine grew up glued at the hip in Verona — two bros who swore they’d never ghost each other. Proteus was the clingy one: lovesick for a girl back home named Julia, all letters and late-night vows. Valentine? He was … Continue reading “Verona Vibes: Besties, Betrayals & Glow-Ups” – Poetcore Shakespeare: The Bard for Gen Z
Revisionist Poetry – “The Attic of October” – Inherited Halloweens, v.4
Inheriting the Halloween relics,we ascend into the dustened loftwhere old boxes breathe their mildew hymnsand every lid seems sealed with midnight. Within them lie the legacies of October:faded masks with mouths fixed in dread,papier-mâché phantoms gone yellow with age,skeletal faces grinning through their decayas if death itself had learned to decorate. They wait there like … Continue reading Revisionist Poetry – “The Attic of October” – Inherited Halloweens, v.4
T.A.E.’s Book Review – A Child’s Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses is one of the most enduringly graceful accomplishments in children’s poetry, but its reputation as a nursery classic can obscure how artfully strange, psychologically nuanced, and formally sophisticated it is. Published in 1885, the collection presents itself as a sequence of simple poems drawn from the imaginative … Continue reading T.A.E.’s Book Review – A Child’s Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson
Revisionist Poetry – “The House Remembers Halloween” – Inherited Halloweens, v.3
Every year the attic gives backits inheritance of masks and skeletons,its cracked lanterns, its grinning dead,packed away like captured weather. You can still feel them breathingunder the dust and folded paper:those papier-mâché phantoms,those goblins with their painted shock,those jack-o’-lantern facesfrozen in the act of becoming night. They once stood at the edge of the streetunder … Continue reading Revisionist Poetry – “The House Remembers Halloween” – Inherited Halloweens, v.3
T.A.E.’s Book Review – The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde remains one of the most enduring explorations of moral duality in modern fiction. Though often reduced to a simple cautionary tale about good and evil, the novella is far more unsettling than that. Stevenson does not merely split a man into two selves; … Continue reading T.A.E.’s Book Review – The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
Revisionist Poetry – “Inheritances of October” – Inherited Halloweens, v.2
Inheriting the Halloween trunks,we lift out years wrapped in cardboard— paper ghosts, bent witches,plastic skulls with their fixed bright grins. Each object keeps its small empireof porch-light, wind, and ringing doorbells;each one remembersthe shriek of a child half-laughing,half-convinced the dark has teeth. These relics do not sleep entirely.They wait in their tissue paper coffins,their hollow … Continue reading Revisionist Poetry – “Inheritances of October” – Inherited Halloweens, v.2
T.A.E.’s Book Review – Schiele by Reinhard Steiner
Reinhard Steiner’s Schiele is a compact Taschen monograph, running to 96 pages, and its chapter structure already reveals its interpretive intelligence: “The artist’s self,” “I went by way of Klimt,” “The figure as signifier,” “The visionary and symbolic works,” and “Landscapes of the soul.” That progression suggests a book less interested in exhaustive biography than … Continue reading T.A.E.’s Book Review – Schiele by Reinhard Steiner
Revisionist Poetry – “Tenant of the Dark” – Growing, v.4
In dreams, I am overrun. Not by force at first,but by manners. It arrives with its pale hatsand whispering hems,tipping itself politelythrough the corridors of my skull. “Only a little room,” it seems to say.“Only a little damp.Only a corner of your thinking.” And because it speaks so softly,I let it in. It gathers in … Continue reading Revisionist Poetry – “Tenant of the Dark” – Growing, v.4
T.A.E.’s Book Review – Viva Zapata! by John Steinbeck
John Steinbeck’s Viva Zapata! is less a conventional biographical screenplay than a tragic meditation on power, integrity, and the corruption that attends victory. Though it dramatizes the life of Emiliano Zapata, the author is not chiefly interested in historical pageantry. He is interested in the moral problem of revolution: what happens when a righteous uprising … Continue reading T.A.E.’s Book Review – Viva Zapata! by John Steinbeck
Revisionist Poetry – “Mycelium in the Mind” – Growing, v.3
In sleep I am a house gone damp. Something whitens in the darkbehind my eyes. At first it is only a haze,a moth-fine blurring of thought—then the spores take root. They move with terrible courtesy,spreading through the corridors of me,down into the hinges of my jointswhere pain begins to flower. I can feel them learning … Continue reading Revisionist Poetry – “Mycelium in the Mind” – Growing, v.3
The New Renaissance Mindset 