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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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January 4, 2026
AI Declaration
In discussing the inclusion of an "AI declaration" in yesterday's blog post the staff realized that the Poison Pie Publishing House has not issued an IA declaration. Until now, we overlooked such a statement because it wasn't relevant to us. However as AI permeates the creative world, a definitive position becomes a useful badge of identification. Find below the AI declaration of the Poison Pie Publishing House. In years to come it may seem the quaint sentiment of a Luddite. Nevertheless, it has the advantage of being true.
All creative output—written, visual and otherwise—of the Poison Pie Publishing House, past and present, is generated exclusively by human beings. No large-language models were employed in the creative process. Adoption of AI tools is not planned in the future. Any subsequent deviation from this statement will be explicitly noted.
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January 3, 2026
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. For the past few years, the PPPH staff have added a new entry monthly. In 2026, it is our plan to add a new entry to the survey semi-monthly on the first and third Saturdays of each month, as we have accumulated a backlog. Today, January 3, 2026, we add the 360th volume. A link to the index of the survey is here.
As a sign of the changing times, the first entry for 2026, A Compendium of Familiars & Companions: Volume 1: Beasts & Fey, published by Adventurica in 2025, contains a new category of description, namely an "AI declaration". This comment states whether tools of artificial intelligence were employed in the generation of the creative work, either words or artwork. As before, we make no judgment of the bestiary but present an entry from it and allow readers to formulate their own response.
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January 2, 2026
Null_Sets
Here at the Poison Pie Publishing House, we are nothing if not creatures of habit. With the completion of Hebeloma's Psalm of Absolution, we have translated the text to an abstract image, using the Null_Sets script created by Prof. Amy Szczepanski and Prof. Evan Meaney, who at the time, were members of the faculty in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department and the Art Department respectively at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. We have converted many written works from the PPPH to Null_Sets images since we learned of it sometime in, if memory serves, 2015. A link to the index of the Null_Sets gallery at the PPPH is here.
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January 1, 2026
2025: The Year in Review at the Poison Pie Publishing House
In the year 2025, the staff of the Poison Pie Publishing House produced one new book, issued two second editions of technical monographs and released one book into the digital wilds. Hebeloma's Psalm of Absolution, a post-existential musical score generated through a non-idiomatic, improvisational creative process, was serially published on a daily basis in 2025 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 Psalm of Absolution recounts the adventure of Melite, one of the maidens offered to the minotaur by King Minos, immediately after she escaped from the labyrinth.
The technical branch of the Poison Pie Publishing House published second editions of two monographs: A Practical Introduction to Applied Statistics for Materials Scientists and Engineers and A Practical Introduction to Numerical Methods for Materials Scientists and Engineers, for use in an undergraduate course on the subjects. Approximately one hundred tutorial codes were translated to Python.
In March, the PPPH digitally released I Saw Blood and then Everything Went Black, written in 1992—1993 and originally published in paperback in 2012.
Also in 2025, 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 few 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 Lament in a Dozen Denials (2024) as well as the first two window tapestries composed of panels of entries from volumes included in A Survey of One Hundred Bestiaries.
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 Scherzo for Solo Flute (2026).
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 5, 2025
Review: Ten Records to Stave Off Darkness in 2025
The staff of the Poison Pie Publishing House take the opportunity to share their thoughts about ten amazing records released in 2025 that provided illumination as we wandered through a troubled year in America.
Review Date: December 5, 2025
Reviewer: Poison Pie Publishing House Staff
Link to Review: review link
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October 6, 2025
 Review: Utopirica - Tomomi Kubo & Björt Rùnars
We review an interesting and perhaps unprecedented meeting between Ondes Martenot and cello in the new album, Utopirica by Tomomi Kubo & Björt Rùnars.
Review Date: October 6, 2025
Reviewer: Poison Pie Publishing House Staff
Link to Review: review link
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September 21, 2025
Bestiary Tapestry
The staff of the Poison Pie Publishing House continue their glacial progress in creating a tapestry of a menagerie composed entirely of entities found within the pages of the several hundred volumes, most of which are collected in A Survey of One Hundred Bestiaries. The work is an assemblage of panels, each containing an image rendered as a shrinky dink. Recent additions include four interpretations of the xorn, a creature hailing from the Elemental Plane of Earth.
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August 5, 2025
Second Editions of Applied Statistics and Numerical Methods for Materials Scientists & Engineers are Published
Just in time for the fall semester, revised and expanded editions to the technical monographs are now published. These textbooks replace the first editions published ten years ago. All codes in both textbooks are updated to Python. The books are currently available from Lulu (Applied Statistics & Numerical Methods) with broader distribution (e.g. amazon) pending.
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July 9, 2025
Review: Shamanism - Kim Jung Jae
Musical improvisation is an art form that has the potential to be simultaneously ancient and modern. On the album, Shamanism, Jung-Jae Kim leads a free quartet on a musical endeavor that embodies this principle and frames it within a uniquely Korean perspective.
Review Date: July 9, 2025
Reviewer: Poison Pie Publishing House Staff
Link to Review: review link
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June 28, 2025
Barre Phillips (October 27, 1934 - December 28, 2024)
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| photo credit: Elmar Petzold, Bochum, 2019. |
We had an itch to listen to Journal Violone again this morning. While doing so, we wondered if Barre Phillips was still alive. A quick search revealed that he had died at the end of last year. We read a couple obituaries, which we appreciated very much. We reproduce two fragments below. The first is a reflection by John Fordham from his obituary in The Guardian. The second is a quote by Phillips from a 1970 interview with Richard Williams, recollected in his obituary published on his blog, The Blue Moment.
[H]earing Phillips' originality brought realisations that had never occurred to me before.
Most notable was the insistence that an audience's attention could be gripped simply by whatever next unexpected thought entered an improviser's head — and could maybe even be held on to for an entire concert-length solo show — by those with the technical resourcefulness and imaginative sweep to do it.*
"I'm interested in the process of making music," he said. "I'm not really interested in the product at all, because I've got enough confidence to know that if I'm into it the product is really going to be OK anyway. That's my personal reason — to have something to communicate to an audience besides the product. If I can show my process to people, perhaps they can understand themselves a lot better."†
*Barre Phillips Obituary, John Fordham, The Guardian, January 14, 2025, full text.
†Barre Phillips 1934-2024, Richard Williams, The Blue Moment, January 1, 2025, full text.
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June 22, 2025
First Exploratory Illustrations for Hebeloma's Psalm of Absolution
The staff of the Poison Pie Publishing House post the first draft illustrations by Julia K. Keffer of Bus Stop Art Show for the musical score, Hebeloma's Psalm of Absolution. Interested visitors can view works in progress as they are generated by the artist and transmitted to the PPPH staff on the gallery page.
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June 18, 2025
Review: Marches Rewound & Rewritten - Maria Faust Sacrum Facere
To be clear, the staff of the Poison Pie Publishing House have never exhibited any interest in the genre of music described as "Brass and Military". Therefore, it comes as a great surprise to all involved that the music on the album, Marches Rewound & Rewritten by Maria Faust Sacrum Facere induced them to write a review of the various thoughts that came to the surface over repeated listenings.
Review Date: June 18, 2025
Reviewer: Poison Pie Publishing House Staff
Link to Review: review link
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May 31, 2025
The Lament in a Dozen Denials Mobile is Complete
A mobile featuring the artwork from Hebeloma's Lament in a Dozen Denials (2024) is complete. Updates appear 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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May 15, 2025
Review: Balss un rezonanse - Eleonora Kampe
Despite their best efforts to retreat into lethargic inactivity, the staff of the Poison Pie Publishing House were compelled to put down a few words regarding an astounding album, which is a collaboration between a vocalist new to our ears and the architecture of historic places in Riga, Latvia.
Review Date: May 15, 2025
Reviewer: Poison Pie Publishing House Staff
Link to Review: review link
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April 18, 2025
Bestiary Tapestry
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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archived news updates
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