Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart is a study in compression: a few pages of prose that map, with surgical precision, the anatomy of guilt. Unlike long Gothic romances that luxuriate in setting and backstory, Poe offers a single, claustrophobic motion — the narrator’s descent from confident rationalization into seizure-like confession — and trusts that … Continue reading The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe
Revisionist Poetry – The Lay of Copernicus Wiffledown (finished), v.3
Copernicus Wiffledown was much admired—a well-to-do gentleman who kept a pouchof wrapped surprises beneath his coat:a mitten for a red-nosed passerby,a loaf slipped through a shuttered window,a bright tin soldier for a child who’d lost one. They called him the Christmas-Day Scrooge—not because he grudged, but because he counted:each gift catalogued, each ribbon given a … Continue reading Revisionist Poetry – The Lay of Copernicus Wiffledown (finished), v.3
The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” is often taught as the archetype of the short, perfectly executed revenge tale; read closely, it is also a miniature philosophical probe into pride, performative identity, and the moral elasticity permitted by first-person confession. In under 3,000 words Poe stages a slow, elegant murder that doubles as a … Continue reading The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe
The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – The Republic by Plato
Plato’s The Republic remains one of those rare books that functions simultaneously as a founding text of political thought, a work of moral psychology, and a sustained exercise in dramatic philosophy. Written as a dialogue with Socrates at its center, it pursues a single, seemingly straightforward question — “What is justice?” — and from that … Continue reading The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – The Republic by Plato
Revisionist Poetry – As I read this, v.5 – (intimate mood)
I’m down — I keep them close:my favorite pessimists, bedside friends,Kurt’s sharp laugh, Rod’s exposed heart.I study their habits to learn how not to break. love of others,love of self:I admit I confuse the two,give away my warmth and keep the ache,each misdirected like a misaddressed letter. I’m up sometimes,not by bravado but by accident,lifted … Continue reading Revisionist Poetry – As I read this, v.5 – (intimate mood)
The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink
Daniel H. Pink’s Drive reads at first like a corrective essay to a long domestic argument: for decades, the dominant picture of human motivation has been the carrot-and-stick economy of rewards and punishments; Pink insists we have the wrong map. The book’s central—and elegantly simple—claim is that for tasks requiring creativity, judgement, and sustained engagement, … Continue reading The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink
Revisionist Poetry – As I read this, v.4 – (mournful mood)
I am downwith late-afternoon companions:Vonnegut in the small rooms of irony,McKuen with paper moons in his hands. love of others,love of selfhang together like a last scarf,intertwined, misdirected,folded over the silence. I rise — for a moment —only to the wishof clouds, slow and gone,holding the shape of absence.
The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – The 20th Century Art Book from Phaidon Press
Phaidon's The 20th Century Art Book presents itself as an atlas of modernity: a compact compendium that tries, with admirable audacity, to put the century’s dizzying artistic revolutions into the reader’s hands. It is not a monograph, nor an exhaustive history; it is a curator’s pocket guide, a series of literary vignettes paired with image-plates, … Continue reading The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – The 20th Century Art Book from Phaidon Press
Revisionist Poetry – As I read this, v.3 – (comic mood)
I’m down —members-only club:Kurt (deadpan martini),Rod (velvet-valentine).They pass out pessimism like party favours. love of others,love of self:both placed on the buffet —someone mislabeled the plates,someone ate the wrong dessert. I’m up!(brief stage light)only to the wishof clouds — RSVP: maybe.
The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – The Art Book from Phaidon Press
Phaidon’s The Art Book is not a book that seeks to be read from first page to last as a single sustained argument; it is an atlas of encounters. Its achievement is simple and ambitious at once: to compress the dizzying plurality of visual practice into a portable, democratic form. The editors do not attempt … Continue reading The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – The Art Book from Phaidon Press
The New Renaissance Mindset 