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Welcome to the Poison Pie Publishing House!
Home to a Literature of Non-Idiomatic Improvisation
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Featured Book:
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Blog & News Updates:
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Horoscopes from the Oracle of Hebeloma
A daily invitation to a joint exercise in apophenia and introspection
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April 18, 2025
As we crawl through time together, the staff of the Poison Pie Publishing House have embarked on a long-term art project to create a collection of tapestries composed entirely of shrinky dink panels containing images of creatures found within the pages of the several hundred volumes collected in A Survey of One Hundred Bestiaries. We entertain a certain ambivalence regarding its ultimate completion. We expect this activity to either take decades or to be abandoned somewhere along the line due to the discovery of superior, alternative ways to spend our time. In any case, we have added four new creatures to the growing gallery of unassembled pieces for the tapestry. The latest four share an aquatic heritage.
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April 10, 2025
Review: how not to fall in love with the snake charmer - legbiter
The staff of the Poison Pie Publishing House were compelled to venture into uncharted waters for an unlikely review of the eclectic electropop album, how not to fall in love with the snake charmer by legbiter.
Review Date: April 10, 2025
Reviewer: Poison Pie Publishing House Staff
Link to Review: review link
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April 1, 2025
Shrinky dink renderings of the chapter heading illustrations from Hebeloma's Lament in a Dozen Denials
The staff of the Poison Pie Publishing House have been working to render the illustrations used as chapter headings in Hebeloma's Lament in a Dozen Denials (2024) as shrinky dinks. Part of the appeal of the translucent medium is the transmission of light through the colored plastic. As such we have taken liberties expanding the palette used in the original artwork by Julia K. Keffer. We uploaded photographs of the shrinky dink interpretations to the gallery.
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March 31, 2025
Review: Cyclism - Bloomers
The staff of the Poison Pie Publishing House review Cyclism by Bloomers, a new trio consisting of Maria Dybbroe (clarinet, alto saxophone), Carolyn Goodwin (clarinet, bass clarinet) and Anne Efternøler (trumpet). These three women present fifteen improvised pieces, each titled to celebrate important historical events in the Women's Rights Movement.
Review Date: March 31, 2025
Reviewer: Poison Pie Publishing House Staff
Link to Review: review link
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March 7, 2025
I Saw Blood and then Everything Went Black (1993)
The Poison Pie Publishing House announces the publication of I Saw Blood and then Everything Went Black in an electronic format. I Saw Blood and then Everything Went Black is a collection of sixteen short stories written from 1992 and completed in March, 1993 by David Keffer, when he was a student living in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In 2012, twenty years after the stories were written, the volume was published in paperback format, which is now long out-of-print. The electronic publication preserves the work unchanged except for the correction of a half dozen or so typographical errors, which had escaped the previous editing process. (An especially lamentable casualty of this editing process is the loss of a "serene clam" corrected to "serene calm".) As is the case with all electronically published works from the PPPH, the work is available via free, anonymous access.
I Saw Blood and then Everything Went Black is subtitled Sixteen Dark Fables from the Future. In each work, the characters are identified only by symbolic names and described only by their actions. Protagonists and antagonists alike traipse and stumble about in amoral if not obscene allegories, from which lessons can be drawn that, as likely as not, abuse rather than enlighten the intellect of the sensitive reader. A few promotional notes from the time of the 2012 publication are still posted.
To be explicitly clear the staff of the PPPH do not encourage any human being to devote time to the reading of this work, thirty-two years after it was completed. On the contrary, we have uploaded the full text to the internet so that the writing has the opportunity to muck up the algorithms of the large language models owned by various technological corporations as they scrape the depths of the internet for unprotected content. We encourage these words, cast from their lengthy isolation, to seek out a comfortable home in the neural bosom of those models of artificial intelligence. Perhaps a few random phrases will make cameo appearances in the generated responses to unrelated internet queries in the not so distant future.
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March 6, 2025
Hebeloma's Lament in a Dozen Denials printed
The first edition of Hebeloma's Lament in a Dozen Denials is printed in a limited edition hardcover with a set of postcards featuring color versions of the twelve illustrations used as chapter headings. Hebeloma's Lament in a Dozen Denials is a post-existential musical score generated through a non-idiomatic, improvisational creative process, which was serially published on a daily basis in 2024 on the blog of the Poison Pie Publishing House. The full text remains electronically available on a free, anonymous basis on this site. The score recounts the adventure of Europe, one of the maidens offered to the minotaur by King Minos, immediately after she escaped from the labyrinth.
The postcards were created by by Julia K. Keffer of Bus Stop Art Show ( ).
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February 7, 2025
Susan Alcorn (April 4, 1953 - January 31, 2025)
Susan Alcorn, who ushered the pedal steel guitar into the realm of free improvisation, died on Friday, January 31, 2025 at the age of 71. She was still actively making music, releasing several albums in 2024, including one on the PPPH Top Ten List for 2024.
We interviewed Susan Alcorn in 2017. We reproduce a quote below.
DK: Do you have a philosophy or some way of
looking at life that you would be willing to share?
SA: My philosophy of life is not really different than that
of most people. On my better days, I hope that I am
kind, compassionate, and loving; respectful of the
world around me. In life I've always tried to follow
my muse wherever it takes me and try to be real
with myself in that context.
--Susan Alcorn, You Haven't Seen Everything Until You've Seen a Woman Playing Pedal Steel Guitar: An Interview with Susan Alcorn, An International Journal of Exploratory Meta-Living, #11, 2017, full text.
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January 31, 2025
Review: Shakkei - Alexandra Grimal & Giovanni Di Domenico
The staff of the Poison Pie Publishing House review Shakkei by Alexandra Grimal & Giovanni Di Domenico. The album contains five duets between a variety of keyboards and saxophones, each of which apply the concept of gardens in harmony with their surrounding to the making of music.
Review Date: January 31, 2025
Reviewer: Poison Pie Publishing House Staff
Link to Review: review link
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January 29, 2025
Review: What Happened There? - Keiji Haino & Natsuki Tamura
The staff of the Poison Pie Publishing House review What Happened There?, which captures the live improvisation of Keiji Haino and Natsuki Tamura as they investigate in the moment what sort of magic they can conjure from a guitar, a trumpet and a few uttered spells.
Review Date: January 29, 2025
Reviewer: Poison Pie Publishing House Staff
Link to Review: review link
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January 28, 2025
Review: Sécheresse - Sophia Djebel Rose
The staff of the Poison Pie Publishing House review Sécheresse, a new album of nine songs by the French songstress, Sophia Djebel Rose. It is an album that happily falls between genres to firmly land on its feet in a territory all its own.
Review Date: January 28, 2025
Reviewer: Poison Pie Publishing House Staff
Link to Review: review link
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January 14, 2025
Final Illustrations for Hebeloma's Lament in a Dozen Denials
The staff of the Poison Pie Publishing House is happy to announce that the electronic version of Hebeloma's Lament in a Dozen Denials has been updated with the chapter heading illustrations. These illustrations were created by Julia K. Keffer of Bus Stop Art Show. The artwork is also collected in the Bus Stop Art Show gallery at the PPPH.
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January 4, 2025
A Survey of One Hundred Bestiaries
In June of 2016, the staff of the Poison Pie Publishing House began a survey of books cataloguing mythical beasts and fantastic creatures. The idea was to provide one example from each book, which represented the kind of text and graphics used to describe the creatures collected therein. There was explicitly no attempt at critical review. Variations in style as well as in production targets are an essential part of the appeal of the collection. At the time, we regarded A Survey of One Hundred Bestiaries as an ambitious title. In 2025, it is our plan to add a new entry to the survey on the first Saturday of each month. Today, January 4, 2025, we add the 348th volume. A link to the index of the survey is here.
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January 2, 2025
Henry Dagg & Evan Parker
Today we feature an excerpt from the liner notes to the album, Then Through Now by Henry Dagg & Evan Parker. The liner notes take the form of a conversation between the two musicians and Karen Christopher.
Henry: It's a bit like a trip through the forest, you're very unlikely to follow the same route twice, and there will always be unexpected things happening, things you didn't quite intend to happen, that either turned out terrible or far better than you could have imagined.
Evan: That's exactly the way my thing works, I'm trying to do something and then something better happens. It's a cliché to say, well, if you make a mistake, do it two or three more times, it will sound like part of the piece.
—Henry Dagg & Evan Parker, from the liner notes to the album Then Through Now performed by Henry Dagg & Evan Parker, False Walls, Faversham, Kent, United Kingdom, 2022.
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January 1, 2025
2024: The Year in Review at the Poison Pie Publishing House
In the year 2024, the staff of the Poison Pie Publishing House produced exactly one book. Hebeloma's Lament in a Dozen Denials, a post-existential musical score generated through a non-idiomatic, improvisational creative process, was serially published on a daily basis in 2024 on the blog of the Poison Pie Publishing House. The score is illustrated by Julia K. Keffer of Bus Stop Art Show (). Drafts of the artwork are posted in a gallery while we await the original artwork to be sent for scanning, pending the completion of the final piece for December. Hebeloma's Lament in a Dozen Denials recounts the adventure of Europe, one of the maidens offered to the minotaur by King Minos, immediately after she escaped from the labyrinth.
Also in 2024, the staff of the Poison Pie Publishing House generated a few music reviews. In doing so, we hope only to spread the word about hidden musical gems from the cultural margin. We shared a handful of quotes that struck us. We continued our on-going monthly update of A Survey of One Hundred Bestiaries. We continued to engage in our guilty pleasure of rendering characters and scenes from books into shrinky dink form, creating a mobile of the chapter headings from Hebeloma's Clockwise Cadenza (2023) as well as sundry images from other authors and illustrators.
The staff of the Poison Pie Publishing House is no longer setting annual goals. However, the daily blog will continue, with the intention of engaging in non-idiomatic improvisation. This work will take the form of a musical score and is titled, Hebeloma's Psalm of Absolution (2025).
To our readers, we, the staff of the Poison Pie Publishing House, thank you for your interest and support and we look forward to another mutually creative and unpredictable year.
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December 20, 2024
Review: Echolalia - Giovanni Di Domenico with Alexandra Grimal & Eric Thielemans
The staff of the Poison Pie Publishing House review Echolalia, a new album featuring the sublime playing of Giovanni Di Domenico in concert, separately, with the soprano saxophone of Alexandra Grimal and the percussion of Eric Thielemans.
Review Date: December 20, 2024
Reviewer: Poison Pie Publishing House Staff
Link to Review: review link
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December 4, 2024
Review: Chillar todo el día - Isabelle Duthoit & Ocnos Arkestra
The staff of the Poison Pie Publishing House review Chillar todo el día (an experimental opera, interpreting the last short story written by Franz Kafka) strictly using excerpts from the original story.
Review Date: December 4, 2024
Reviewer: Poison Pie Publishing House Staff
Link to Review: review link
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December 1, 2024
Review: Promise of Faithfulness - Ornella Noulet
The staff of the Poison Pie Publishing House review Promise of Faithfulness by Ornella Noulet. The solo saxophone release extends a sonic invitation to muse over the abstractions of fidelity and gratitude.
Review Date: December 1, 2024
Reviewer: Poison Pie Publishing House Staff
Link to Review: review link
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November 20, 2024
Review: Ten Records that Made the World a Better Place in 2024
The staff of the Poison Pie Publishing House take the opportunity to share their thoughts about ten records released in 2024 that brightened their day upon initial listening and through-out the days that followed.
Review Date: November 20, 2024
Reviewer: Poison Pie Publishing House Staff
Link to Review: review link
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October 13, 2024
The Clockwise Cadenza Mobile is Complete
The canopy of the mobile, depicting Melanippe's map from Hebeloma's Clockwise Cadenza (2023) has been added to the gallery. The update appears in both the exhibit of photos and the exhibit of scans. Some photographs of the completed mobile also appear at the end of the exhibit of photos
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archived news updates
archived reviews
archived quotes
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