I knew a God…Some river before me —I followed its slow rhythm,as if to tell me it might happen:the lark sang its first song.Some star before me —I leaned into the glitter;no one stopped me from seeingthe last, most colourful page.Some rose before me —I turned toward the aroma,with only fate left to pluckthe first … Continue reading Revisionist Poetry – I knew a God…, v2
The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – Fired Up with Raku: Over 300 Raku Recipes. by Irene Poulton
Irene Poulton’s Fired Up with Raku: Over 300 Raku Recipes reads, at first glance, like a practical compendium; read closely, it reveals itself as a meditation on the paradox at the heart of raku work — the persistent human desire to name, measure, and reproduce a process whose aesthetic power depends on chance. She gives … Continue reading The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – Fired Up with Raku: Over 300 Raku Recipes. by Irene Poulton
The Adaptable Educator’s Book Reviews – The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter
Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1902) is a pocket-sized fable whose deceptive simplicity disguises a finely tuned moral and aesthetic practice. Written for children yet animated by the author’s keen observational eye, the tale endures because it compresses a complex set of cultural anxieties — discipline and transgression, class and rural economics, the … Continue reading The Adaptable Educator’s Book Reviews – The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter
The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher reads like a concentrated experiment in atmosphere: a short story that refuses to be small, folding psychological pathology, architectural metaphor, and sonic lyricism into a single, inexorable collapse. Poe does not so much tell a tale as stage an experience — one in which language, … Continue reading The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe
The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” reads like a virtuoso exercise in controlled obsession. In a compact, theatrical narrative of no more than a few hundred lines, Poe engineers an atmosphere so resonant that the poem’s central motifs—loss, memory, and the unanswering voice of doom—saturate the reader long after the final refrain. It is less a … Continue reading The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe
Revisionist Poetry – The Lay of Copernicus Wiffledown (comedic), v.4
Copernicus Wiffledown was much admired—a well-to-do gentleman with a bulging pouchlike a squirrel’s briefcase, stuffed with oddments:a clock that ran backwards for sentimental people,a rubber chicken for emergencies, a mitten with a pocket,and tins of biscuits stamped “For Immediate Surprise.” They called him the Christmas-Day Scrooge—not for stinginess but for his solemn inventory:he kept a … Continue reading Revisionist Poetry – The Lay of Copernicus Wiffledown (comedic), v.4
The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe
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
The New Renaissance Mindset 