{"id":45701,"date":"2026-03-10T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T18:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/?p=45701"},"modified":"2026-03-05T15:27:04","modified_gmt":"2026-03-05T22:27:04","slug":"what-is-a-witch-rosalie-lightning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/what-is-a-witch-rosalie-lightning\/","title":{"rendered":"What is a Witch \/ Rosalie Lightning"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

WHAT IS A WITCH \u2013 A POETIC AND VISUAL CONJURING OF THE WITCH ARCHETYPE<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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What is a Witch<\/em>
by Pamela Grossman (author) and Tin Can Forest (artists)
Tin Can Forest
2016, 36 pages, 9.0 x 11.75 x 0.25 inches<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Buy a copy<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are few ideas and words in the popular zeitgeist more mercurial than \u201cwitch.\u201d Whether coming from the world\u2019s mythologies, religions, folk tales, the realms of fiction, or from those who embrace it as a real-world religious identity, witch<\/em> can mean myriad things. There are probably few archetypes more simultaneously romanticized and demonized.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This dizzying dream of character and identity is uniquely and creatively expressed in What is a Witch<\/em>, a sort of comic book grimoire on the subject by witch and author Pamela Grossman and Canadian\u2019s comic-art occultists, Tin Can Forest. In just under 40 pages of lush, saturated black art and text, What is a Witch<\/em> serves as something of a witch\u2019s manifesto. The dreamy, free-form text, interwoven amongst equally dreamy art, attempts to cast a spell over the reader, to bring this complex character more vividly to life. In doing so, it doesn\u2019t really answer the question (note that it\u2019s not posed as one) of what a witch is, but instead, plays with her mercurial identity, dipping in and out of fictional and real-world conceptions and how witches are experienced and self-identified. The art and production are really lovely and work to deepen the spell that the book is attempting to cast. The effect of Grossman\u2019s free, often trance-like prose reminded me somewhat of Jack Parson\u2019s famous \u201cWe are the Witchcraft\u201d manifesto, another attempt at a poetic conjuring on the identity of the witch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is a Witch<\/em> feels like a captured dream to me, one in which the author and artists dutifully recorded what they experienced and shared the results with us. And those results definitely feel touched by magic. \u2013 Gareth Branwyn<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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ROSALIE LIGHTNING \u2013 WHAT COMES AFTER THE SUDDEN, UNEXPLAINED DEATH OF A TWO-YEAR-OLD TODDLER<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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Rosalie Lightning<\/em>
by Tom Hart
St. Martin\u2019s Press
2016, 272 pages, 7.8 x 9.6 x 0.8 inches<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Buy on Amazon<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat do you do when your child dies?\u201d Rosalie Lightning<\/em> shows us what Tom Hart and his partner Leela Corman did as they mourned the sudden, unexplained death of their toddler Rosalie. This graphic memoir, written and drawn by Hart, is a poignant recounting of grief. In the first pages of the book, Rosalie Lightning<\/em>, not yet two, dies in the night, without any known cause or sign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or were there signs? Hart looks for signs and portents \u2013 things that might have given him a clue about was to come \u2014 though knowing the portents are meaningless. \u201cWhat meaning do we make of things?\u201d he asks. Seeking symbols becomes the activity of grief. All the while, he and Corman are visiting friends, selling a home, and considering getting pregnant again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWasn\u2019t I a father? Didn\u2019t I have a daughter?\u201d Hart\u2019s grief is acute and vivid. He mixes grayed drawings of himself with simple, adorable drawings of Rosalie (\u201cRodzy\u201d as she pronounced it). He brings her to life for us through her toddler language \u201cbumbites\u201d (bug bites), \u201cRodzy hep\u201d (Rosalie help) and \u201cbye big spidoo wam!\u201d (no translation needed).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The memoir is personal but not invasive. It provides no pat resolution but instead rests on the symbolism of life that comes from one of Rosalie\u2019s favorite objects to collect \u2013 an acorn. The closing images of the memoir show an acorn growing into a mature tree, accompanied by the repetition of the word \u201cyes.\u201d The affirmation feels equally willing and forced. After the death of loved ones, after all, we want to move on; we must force ourselves to move on. \u2013 Meagan Rodgers<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Issue No. 108<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13684,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[31],"tags":[2398],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45701"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13684"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45701"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45701\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45716,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45701\/revisions\/45716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}