I was born in a pocket of night — a small, safe darkthat felt like forever. Movement told me I existed:warm, resistant matter folded close on every side. Then a sudden white light found me. Fingers, large and soft,closed too firmly; I slid between two warm plains that shut like petals. A spark cracked the … Continue reading Revisionist Poetry – Life of a Smoke, v.3
The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – Winnie the Pooh by A. A. Milne
Few works of children’s literature invite as sustained a double-vision as A. A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh: at once an apparently simple collection of episodic adventures for very young readers and a compact, artful meditation on friendship, play, authority, and the strange temporality of childhood. Published in 1926, the book wears its modesty like a costume—genial, unassuming, … Continue reading The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – Winnie the Pooh by A. A. Milne
Revisionist Poetry – Life of a Smoke, v.2
I lie in the dark that feels like forever.I know I am because movement answers me,solid matter pressing all around. Sudden light. Hands take me—a hard, soft squeeze. I slipbetween two warm surfaces that close. A sharp crack, a white flash; it comes close,then touches. Air rips through me.I burn. Energy becomes pain when the … Continue reading Revisionist Poetry – Life of a Smoke, v.2
The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – Surface Design for Ceramics by Maureen Mills
Maureen Mills’s Surface Design for Ceramics reads like a compact manifesto for the small, concentrated art of ornamentation — not a polemic but a pedagogy: a careful, image-rich argument that the surface of a vessel is not mere decoration appended to a form but an active partner in meaning-making. Presented as one of the practical … Continue reading The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – Surface Design for Ceramics by Maureen Mills
Revisionist Poetry – Have you read the poet?, V.4
Have you read Irving Layton—so loud they praise him?They say he’s fantastic, yet what lingers is small: his smile,an imprint on the mind like a detached fly-wing—a pale shard of motion, exact and obscene. Have you listened to Whitman, the city’s long breath?Do you find him lavish—spilling clauses like summer light? Have you read Rod … Continue reading Revisionist Poetry – Have you read the poet?, V.4
The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – Baltimore, or, The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire by Mike Mignola and Christopher Golden
Mike Mignola’s Baltimore, or, The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire reads like a found object from a ruined twentieth century: a book that is equal parts trench-mud odyssey, moral fable, and Gothic reliquary. Conceived by Mignola and written with Christopher Golden, it was published as an illustrated novel in 2007 and later expanded into … Continue reading The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – Baltimore, or, The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire by Mike Mignola and Christopher Golden
Revisionist Poetry – Have you read the poet?, V.3
Have you read Irving Layton?They say he’s fantastic—but only his smile leaves marks,like a detached fly-wing: small, precise, obscene. Have you listened to Whitman?Do you find him lavish with his breath? Have you read Rod McKuen?They say he moves crowds,but only with a single-minded achefor men and women—like a moth circling a candle: predictable, hungry. … Continue reading Revisionist Poetry – Have you read the poet?, V.3
The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – Joe Golem and the Drowning City by Mike Mignola and Christopher Golden
Mike Mignola and Christopher Golden’s Joe Golem and the Drowning City announces itself as many things at once: an illustrated novel, a pastiche of pulp detective fiction, a piece of dark folklore, and a careful exercise in atmosphere. Published as an illustrated novel in 2012, it is a collaborative hybrid in which Mignola’s visual imagination … Continue reading The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – Joe Golem and the Drowning City by Mike Mignola and Christopher Golden
Revisionist Poetry – Have you read the poet?, V.2
Have you read Irving Layton?They say he’s fantastic,but only his smile leaves indelible marks—like a detached fly-wing: small, precise, obscene. Have you listened to Whitman?Do you find him lavish with his breath,sprawling praise across the city’s shoulders? Have you read Rod McKuen?They say he moves crowds—but only with a single-minded achefor men and women,like a … Continue reading Revisionist Poetry – Have you read the poet?, V.2
The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – 500 Paper Objects: New Directions in Paper Art by Gene McHugh
Gene McHugh’s 500 Paper Objects performs the deceptively ambitious work of making a single, humble material speak with the variety and insistence of a chorus. Arranged as a dense visual catalogue rather than a sustained monograph, the book stages paper not as a passive substrate but as an active agent: folded, torn, cast, burned, layered, … Continue reading The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – 500 Paper Objects: New Directions in Paper Art by Gene McHugh
The New Renaissance Mindset 